Her career as a photographer spanned only a short period of 11 years, but she managed to make it a memorable one. Cameron registered each of her photos with the copyright office to assure that each and every photograph that she took would be credited to her and allow her to hold a key place in the history of photography.
In the Beginning
Julia Margaret Cameron was born in 1815 in Calcutta, India to James Pattle and Adeline de l’Etang. Pattle was a British official of the East India Company and his wife was the daughter of French Aristocrats.
Although educated in France, Cameron returned to India in 1838 and married Charles Hay Cameron. He was twenty years her senior. The jurist retired in 1848 and the family moved to London. Cameron had a sister who lived there and hosted a salon that received regular visits from world famous artists and writers.
A New Career
She was 48 years old when she received her first camera and although late in life to take on a new career, this did not dissuade her. She convinced all of her friends, business associates, and relatives to become her subjects for her budding new career. With photography being a relatively new medium, some of the personalities that she captured on film were never photographed previously nor would they ever be. So if not for these photographs of Cameron’s there would be no photographic likenesses of some key historical figures.
Being married to her retired Jurist husband Charles, allowed her to exist within the top circles of society in Victorian England. Subjects such as poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and astronomer Sir John Herschel were among her subjects. When asked where her inspiration came from she often credited famous artists Michelangelo and Raphael.
Her Style
Cameron’s pictured were known for a fuzzy, slightly out of focus look for which some of the artists of her day ridiculed her. She searched for a more artistic approach to the portrait and felt she achieved it in this manner. She referred to it as differential focus, which she felt gave a modeled effect.
Cameron was a religious woman and she felt that she could help revive religious art through her photography. One of Cameron’s photos, “The Return: After Three Days” combines several episodes in the life of Christ. The main focus of the pictures are of a young Christ. Flowers that are present in the photo are out of focus, suggesting rather than representing his passion. She viewed her spirituality as an element to emphasize in her work.
Cameron lived in Britain with her husband and six children and spent her days reading Tennyson and Carlyle, and going to art exhibitions with many of her artist friends.
Cameron’s morality was often found as an obvious element within her art. Her photographs were far from prudish, but did touch upon the common morals and ethics of the day. It was this boldness of Cameron’s interpretation, and her confidence in treating difficult subjects, which made Cameron stand out as an artist. Her artistic style was one which allowed her to work out her cultural conflicts visually and arrive at imaginative solutions to her religious quandaries.
One of her images depicts a man of Mediterranean descent with eyes lowered and a growth of beard, which bears a striking similarity to Christ. The man appears in pain or suffering an interior state of resentment and resignation. This photo caused conflict as the belief of the day was that Christ was not angry, but instead a meek and mild man, but in portraying him as she did at such a moment of emotional intensity and in such an ambiguous way, was considered to be sheer heresy on her part. Doing this through photography, a more natural lifelike medium was to break the ultimate taboo of depicting the Messiah naturalistically.
One of Cameron’s most well known photos was one made of the story of Beatrice Cenci who committed incest with her father and conspired with her mother to kill him. The artist Guido Reni had painted the scene prior to her attempt to recreate it. Cameron’s version was said to well excel in the psychological insight and artistic treatment that she utilized in the photograph. This photo was among a group of twenty eight photographs which she sent to Victor Hugo.
Cameron worked in her studio which was a converted hen coop, looking for the beauty in the human form. She drew upon what she knew of the Bible’s Old and New Testament. Greek Mythology, Renaissance painting and the classics of English Literature to formulate her concepts for her photographs. With personal experiences and a bevy of close personal friends, she not only had willing subjects, but a wealth of knowledge to draw upon when posing her subjects. Cameron had no formal education, which was not unusual for a women of her time, but she was a voracious reader.
Cameron’s women never smiled in her photographs. They express sorrow, resignation and solemnity. They seem deeply within their own heads. Not at all affected by what’s going on around them. They almost seem as if they are saying…”This is who I am if you don’t like it too bad.”
One of her key techniques was to dress the affluent as if poor and the poor as if wealthy. She didn’t see the wealth or finer things in the subject, but instead searched out to show the beauty within. She well accomplished this in her work and will be forever remembered for the photos she took.
Cameron’s family suffered some financial difficulties, at a time when her work just began to take off. Unfortunately this played a role in her art and she could not pursue it as she had hoped. With her family penniless Cameron returned to the East in 1875. Four years later she died in Ceylon.
Resources:
V & A Julia Margaret Cameron Biography http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/features/photo_focus/cameron/biography/index.html
The J Paul Getty Museum: Julia Margaret Cameron
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=2026
Masters of Photography: Julia Margaret Cameron
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron.html