Julia Margaret Cameron
English, 1815-1879
Portrait of Sir John Herschel, 1875 ca.
carbon print
13 1/2 x 10 3/4 in.
SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by PhotoFutures
2006.35
Julia Margaret Cameron, photographed by her brother-in-law Charles Somers Somers-Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers, c. 1860
"I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied." - Julia Margaret Cameron
Cameron 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... . As she wrote to Herschel, "I believe in other than mere conventional topographic photography—map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form."
RESEARCH PAPER
Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta, India, on June 11, 1815. She was the daughter of an upper-class family of British colonials. Her great niece, Virginia Woolf, wrote in 1926, in an introduction to the Hogarth's Collection of Cameron's Photographs, " In the trio (of sisters) where...(one) was Beauty; and (one) Dash; Mrs. Cameron was undoubtedly Talent."
Considered a pioneer of a new medium that would soon prove to be an art form, Cameron, in the mid 19th century was, indeed, not only talented but a forerunner of what many succeeding photographers have attempted to portray in their works. She was not only a gifted portraitist but with her experimentations with the scientific elements involved in the photographic process, discovered the value of soft focus for creating an ambience for her subject matter. Although much of the effect created by her soft focus was inevitable due to the fact that her subjects had to pose with as little movement as possible (a difficult task to say the least!) for up to fifteen minutes while Cameron exposed her plates, these portraits are, clearly, the result of an artist's eye behind a lens.
Of particular interest in Cameron's biography is the fact that she only became a photographer when her daughter and son-in-law, gave her a large box camera with plates for her 48th birthday in 1863. It was given with the words, "It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater." Cameron became immediately obsessed with this new "toy", asking her family and friends to pose for those long periods of time while she carried out the laborious tasks of coating, exposing and processing the wet plates. A mother of six, and a deeply religious, well read, somewhat eccentric friend of many of Victorian England's greatest minds: the painter G. F. Watts; the poets Robert Browning, Henry Taylor, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, her neighbor at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight; the scientists Charles Darwin and Sir John Herschel; and the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. In the decade that followed the gift, the camera became far more than an amusement to her: "From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour," she wrote, "and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour." Her mesmerizing portraits and figure studies on literary and biblical themes were unprecedented in her time and remain among the most highly admired of Victorian photographs.
Sir John Herschel, in his work with telescopes, for which he is credited with many revolutionary celestial observations and was even considered the Newton of his time, was well aware of Daguerre's work. He became interested in capturing and retaining images and in 1839 had managed to "fix" pictures. An accomplished chemist, Herschel discovered the action of hyposulfite of soda on otherwise insoluble silver salts in 1819, which led to the use of "hypo" as a fixing agent in photography. In 1839, independently of William Henry Fox Talbot, Herschel also invented a photographic process using sensitized paper. Herschel had the fortune to be around just at the time both Daguerre and Fox Talbot were announcing their discoveries. But it is to Herschel that we owe the word "photography", a term which he used in a paper entitled "Note on the art of Photography, or The Application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the Purpose of Pictorial Representation", presented to the Royal Society on March 14, 1839. He also coined the terms "negative" and "positive" in this context, as well as the phrase "snap-shot".
Cameron's portrait of Sir John Herschel, taken ca. 1875, not only records the relationship of these two individuals but demonstrates Cameron's ability to capture the essence of her subject. In this haunting portrait we see an old man, part "mad scientist", part extraordinary thinker, with his aging body, eccentricities and complexities exposed: deeply crevassed skin, wild, white hair, and piercing, subtly moist eyes, staring into the lens as if he were asking, "What else is out there to discover?" Ultimately we see a unique and very human being. If Cameron had lived in the next century, she would, without question, be considered in the league of great portraitists such as Yousuf Karsh, Richard Avedon and Annie Leibowitz.
Perhaps Cameron's own words best express her personal philosophy, gifts and contribution to photography: "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty".
Julia Margaret Cameron died in Ceylon in 1879, where she had continued to practice photography. Almost none of these works remain, as she found it difficult to find the chemical and pure water needed to preserve the photos. Nevertheless, Cameron was a prodigious photographer while she lived in England and along with the special photographic diaries she created for family and friends, her works are well documented. Seen with historical perspective, it is clear that Cameron possessed an extraordinary ability to imbue her photographs with a powerful spiritual content, the quality that separates them from the products of commercial portrait studios of her time. In a dozen years of work in England, effectively ended by the Camerons' departure for Ceylon in 1875, the artist produced perhaps 900 images—a gallery of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian soul.
Prepared for SBMA Docent Council by Calla J. Corner, February, 2009
Edited and additions by Loree Gold, January, 2013
Bibliography:
Jody Zellen, J. Paul Getty Museum
Carl Jones, Wellesley College Library
Wikipedia
A history of Photography, Robert Leggat
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=2026&page=1
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1917