Julia Margaret Cameron - Time Out
We take it for granted today but when photography was first invented, it must have been extraordinary to witness a moment in time captured forever as a static image. When you look at Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs from more than 150 years ago, you are reminded why photography was, and still is, so enchanting.
To celebrate the bicentenary of Cameron’s birth, two museums pay tribute to the experimental photographer. At the V&A, in a majestically crimson-painted gallery, the display focuses on Cameron’s relationship with the museum and its founding director Sir Henry Cole. He gave Cameron her first show in 1865. Sepia-tinged and often blurry, her photos retain the traces of the photographic process – smudges, scuffs and scratches due to the hazardous and sensitive chemicals used. They’re alluring and haunting. Apparitional portraits of friends and family are hung next to religious and allegorically themed compositions, which feature one of Cameron’s recurring muses and models, her personal maid Mary Ann Hillier. Notable sitters include geologist Charles Darwin and poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Yet some of Cameron’s most striking works feature her niece Julia Jackson (pictured). Mother of Bloomsbury group writer Virginia Woolf and artist Vanessa Bell, Jackson was a favoured model of the Pre-Raphaelites. Her classical beauty and forlorn expression lend each portrait a beguiling power.
Over at the Science Museum some of the same images can be seen, but here they are part of one of the many portfolios Cameron created during her career, gifted to the scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1864. Some 90 examples are on display. In these works many of the sitter’s eyes avoid the camera lens giving them an air of introspection. Yet due to the photographic process requiring sitters to stay still for a long period of time,sometimes Cameron’s subjects appear startled or mad; Herschel’s eyes almost seem to pop out of his skull.
What is most remarkable about this display are the eight photographs taken in Ceylon when the Camerons returned to their ailing coffee plantation in the late 1870s. Here, she captures her servants and local residents as themselves, a rarity during imperial rule when picturesque scenes were more the norm. Right up until her death in 1879, Cameron persevered in creating captivating and timeless impressions. Going beyond mere documentation, she was a pioneer who, during photography’s infancy, pushed the medium towards something truly profound.
This review appeared in Time Out London
