Julia Margaret Cameron Essay

715 Words2 Pages

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most renowned portrait photographers of the nineteenth century. She was born in June 11th, 1815 in Calcutta, India. Cameron died January 26th, 1879 in Kalutara, Ceylon now known as Sri Lanka. Julia Margaret Cameron, whose original name was Julia Margaret Pattle, was a daughter of an officer in the East India Company. She married jurist Charles Hay Cameron in 1838. The pair had six children and settled off the Isle of Wight in 1860. Julia Margaret Cameron received a camera as a present in 1863 and proceeded to convert a chicken coop into a studio and a coal bin into a dark room in which she began making her renowned portraits. Cameron’s sister owned and ran the studio …show more content…

Modern photographic establishments appreciated her emphasis on spiritual depth over technical perfection and consider her to be one of the finest portrait photographers of her medium. Similar to many popular Victorian photographers Cameron made allegorical and elaborate studio photographs. An example of this would be posing and costuming family members and servants in imitation of the popular Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite paintings of the old days. She made albumen-silver prints from wet collodion glass plate and then turned them into negatives. This was not an easy task as an error at any stage in the process could dramatically affect the final look of the photograph. She had a innovative and unconventional approach when it came to the technical applications of photography. Julia Margaret Cameron had this approach to create images that transcended a purely descriptive function of photography. The pictorial effects and the lack of focus are the most debated aspects and indicators of her photography. Her works in the early months of 1864 (when she first started working) were conducted through a process of trial and error from which she developed her unique technical and aesthetic understanding of photography as an art. Cameron also used gelatin

More about Julia Margaret Cameron Essay

Open Document