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Abstract

One of the most important figures in the history of photography has a new exhibition of her work in London that will transfer to Los Angeles later this year. And one of her most famous pictures is a portrait of Charles Darwin, one of the first generation of intellectuals to be recorded on camera. Julia Margaret Cameron was a late starter to the craft. She was given a camera in 1863 at the age of 48 by her daughter but embraced the technology with a passion bordering on obsession, and in little more than a decade produced hundreds of portraits of the most eminent figures in Victorian England. Many now believe her remarkable collection of photographs were decades before their time. Cameron's portraits of the great figures of Victorian science, art and literature have become the definitive representations of them today. Her portrait of Darwin was used on the cover on the second part of Janet Browne's distinguished biography of him. Cameron lived at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, which was a highly fashionable holiday destination for Victorians – Queen Victoria herself had a substantial summer residence at Osborne House in the north of the island. Cameron converted the greenhouse and coalshed into a studio and darkroom, where she photographed, as well as Darwin, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and astronomer Sir John Herschel. The exhibition is the first major effort to draw on the finest of her prints from museums and private collections throughout Europe and the US. It brings together 120 of her most important images in a unique exhibition that has been organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford. The exhibition also tours to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Her pictures are notable for the intimacy and psychological intensity achieved by the use of extreme close-up, suppression of detail, soft focus and dramatic lighting. But as a woman amateur, Cameron found it hard to find professional recognition in the many photographic and artistic societies that had sprung up in the wake of the new technology developed just a couple of decades earlier. Although she was elected a member of the Photographic Society in London within a year of receiving her first camera, their journal – along with the rest of the photographic press – was quick to criticise her deliberately unsharp pictures. But, more importantly to Cameron, the art world consistently supported her work more than any of her contemporaries. At the peak of her career, she and her husband moved to Sri Lanka, where he owned a number of coffee plantations. She lost her enthusiasm for photography and her work was largely forgotten until it was rediscovered by enthusiasts early in the 20th century. Now is the chance to appreciate her early efforts to capture a real insight to her early subjects of photography. Julia Margaret Cameron at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 26 May 2003, the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford 27 June – 14 September 2003 and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 21 October 2003 – 11 January 2004.