Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) was one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century. Her photographic career began at the age of 48 when she received a camera as a gift from her eldest daughter. She quickly and energetically devoted herself to the art of photography, creating ambitious and experimental compositions, producing prints, and promoting and distributing her works as widely as possible. In addition to creating evocative portraits both of male and female subjects, Cameron staged tableaux and posed her sitters, often friends, family and servants — in simulation of allegorical paintings.

A sensitive and pioneering portraitist, Cameron was criticised in her lifetime for her innovative and unconventional techniques. She wrote of her method of large-scale, out-of-focus portraiture, ‘when...coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon’.

Cameron donated and sold her work to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) and corresponded frequently with Sir Henry Cole, the founding director. Her photographs were exhibited at the Museum in November 1865, the only occasion during her life that her work was shown in a museum.