Julia Margaret Cameron

    Julia Margaret Cameron was a prominent member of society in Calcutta.  She married an influential man named Charles Cameron and had six children.  She raised large sums of money for victims of Irish famine in India in 1846.  Cameron moved in literary and artistic circles into which her sisters had married (1).   Cameron took up photography in middle age (2) when she recieved her first camera from her daughter.
     Julia Margaret Cameron used the Pre-Raphaelite style in most of her photographs.  She had dynamic protraits that were very impressive and noble.  Once she started photography she really threw herself into it.  Her first photograph was Annie, My First Success in 1864.  The photographs she took were blurred and out of focus but, it was deliberate on Cameron's part.  She didnot want to stick to the conventional, idealistic photography of the time.  She valued the simplicity that was used in early calotypes. 
     Many of her photographs were soft and romantic.  They were scenes from literature and her family/friends would act out the scene.  Her photos were of posed groups and even visitors including Darwin and Sir John Hershcel.  Cameron and her works were inspired by David Wynfield, George Watts, and Rejlander. 
      Julia Margaret Cameron won medals for her work in the U.S., Austria, Germany, and England.  She died in Ceylon in 1879.




















(1) Newhall, B. (1982). The History of Photography (S. Weiley, Ed.). New York: The 
     

Museum of Modern Art.

(2)  "Cameron, [née Pattle] Julia Margaret." The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2005. Credo Reference. 27 May 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2011 <http://ezproxy.stevenson.edu:2100/entry/macdwb/cameron_née_pattle_julia_margaret>.