Julia Margaret Cameron, painting by George Frederic Watts
Julia Margret Cameron 1815-1879, was born in Calcutta, India. Cameron moved between India and France before moving to England in 1848. Finally Cameron in 1875 moved to Sri Lanka where she died. Cameron’s career in photography started in 1863 when her daughter gave her a camera for her 48th birthday. Cameron joined the Photographic Societies of London and Scotland within the same year as receiving her camera.
Cameron became a famous portrait photographer, using famaly members and servants as models to pose in front of the camera. Cameron also took portrait photographs of some very significant literary and artistic personalities of her time icluding Robert Browning (poet and playwright), Alfred Lord Tennyson (poet), John Everett Millais (painter and illustrator) ,George Fredric Watts (painter and sculptor), Charles Darwin (naturalist).
Cameron’s style of portrait photography is usuall closely cropped so the viewr focuses on the face.
Cameron’s style was to create photographs that had romantic artistic qualities, creating pictures and portraits of people wearing clothing and in poses that mirrored fashionable romantic paintings that were being produced at that time. These photographs that were inspired by literature and legends.
Cameron is now regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of photography
Cameron originally took photos on a larger camera which held a 15 ¬x 12 inch glass negative though she changed to a large format camera this is so she could take pictures with a larger scale and create more pictures with here photographic vision
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