Julia Margaret Cameron

Life & Legacy

Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was an English photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her portraits of famous Victorians and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature.
She was born in Calcutta, and after establishing herself among the Anglo-Indian upper-class, she moved to London where she made connections with the cultural elite. She then formed her own literary salon in the seaside village of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.
Cameron took up photography at the age of 48, after her daughter gave her a camera as a present. She quickly produced a large body of portraits, and created allegorical images inspired by tableaux vivants, theatre, 15th-century Italian painters, and contemporary artists. She gathered much of her work in albums, including The Norman Album. She took around 900 photographs over a 12-year period.
Cameron's work was contentious. Critics derided her softly focused and unrefined images, and considered her illustrative photographs amateurish. However, her portraits of artists and scientists such as Henry Taylor, Charles Darwin and Sir John Herschel have been consistently praised. Her images have been described as "extraordinarily powerful" and "wholly original", and she has been credited with producing the first close-ups in the medium.