In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to celebrate one photography’s earliest female pioneers, Julia Margaret Cameron. Her style while unconventional at the time paved the way for modern photographic portraits and Fine Art Photography.

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was born in June 1815, in Calcutta, India. She took her first photograph at age 48, and even though her career would only last 12 years, she was incredibly prolific, producing about 900 photographs in that time. I know that might not sound like a lot, compared to the sheer number of photos we can store on our phones today, but considering how labor intensive, involved, prone to mistakes and disasters early photography was, that is an incredible number of images to have produced. She used a method most commonly known as “wet-plate” photography. You take one image at a time, with a very long exposure, and really hope and pray it comes out. Film as we know it was in the very beginning stages, and “wet plate” was the most cutting edge technology available, which she quickly adapted and thrived using.

At the time, photographic equipment was very heavy and physical (still kinda is, but my camera is only like, 10 lb, not 100!). Darkroom chemicals were dangerous, messy, and definitely not in the “ladylike” realm of Victorian expectations, but Cameron never let that stop her. She was fascinated with the art of photography, and even set her chickens loose to use their hen house as her darkroom studio.

Photographic Style

Cameron is best known for her soft-focus style, even though it was brutally criticized at the time for being ,” smudged, torn, and undefined” but those same images have paved the way for modernist portrait photography because she valued the expression and connection in an image over technical perfection. To me, that is where the magic in her images lives, it’s what makes them continue to feel vibrant and personal, connected to the subjects in her images that feels so modern and relatable.

Most Victorian photographs were posed, stuffy, restrained, and distant, but hers feel alive. Her portraits of women feel like real people, like girls I know instead of figures from a distant past time I don’t feel connected to. One of the key things she did was make her subjects take their hair out of the braids and buns that were popular at the time, and let their hair be loose and flowing in a way that you just don’t really see in other victorian portraits.

For the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Malcolm Daniel writes:

Her artistic goals for photography, informed by the outward appearance and spiritual content of fifteenth-century Italian painting, were wholly original in her medium. She aimed for neither the finish and formalized poses common in the commercial portrait studios, nor for the elaborate narratives of other Victorian "high art" photographers such as H. P. Robinsonand O. G. Rejlander.

She is also credited, by some, of taking the first ever “close up” portrait, in a time where more distance to the subject was typical. She photographed many famous artists, thinkers, and celebrities, including: Darwin, Taylor, Tennyson, Longfellow.

Portraits of Charles Darwin, Henry Taylor, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Taken by Julia Margaret Cameron

Photography as Art and Beauty.

We can credit Cameron for striving to bring the new technique of photography into the world of Fine Art by using imagery and lighting similar to pre-Raphaelite paintings. She had a dream that photographs and photographers would be recognized and valued as true High Art, and after her death her dreams were realized. Her album of photographs, the Herschel Album sold at auction in 1974 for £52,000 (an unprecedented amount in those days.) and paved the way for other photographic works to be appreciated and valued and collected as true art

Cameron wrote,

"I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me and at length the longing has been satisfied" and "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty."

I hope you enjoyed this little travel back in time to honor one of the true visionary pioneers of my profession. She has been an inspiration to me for many years and I hope she brings you joy and inspiration as well. For more reading on Julia Margaret Cameron, her Wiki page is a wonderful read, as well as this article from AnOther Mag that goes more into depth about her life and legacy.