The Unforgotten Portfolio of Julia Margaret Cameron
The Unforgotten Portfolio of Julia Margaret Cameron
by Carrie Gaudet de lestard
Intro Julia Margaret Cameron, 1815-1879, was a photographer in the mid to late 1800’s who represented people in an otherwise unseen way. Her work was (and remains) a most cherished and admired body, despite being heavily criticized in publishing years. Additionally, her work did not focus on the value she held for photographing celebrities or evoking commission, but rather on mastering a craft of her own creativity.
Early Life Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta, India, in the year 1815. Her background provides a mix of cultures as her father was Scottish, her mother was French and she lived with her grandmother in raising years in Versailles, France. She attended schools overseas and later on married and took care of 12 children in total. When her kids were grown and her husband would travel, she was all alone and her daughter gifted her with a camera to take up her free time.
Information Cited: https://iphf.org/inductees/julia-margaret-cameron/
Inspiration Julia Margaret Cameron was described as compelling. She had an appetite for the joyful and exciting things in life. She took great care in providing for her friends and family, she was always giving presents and writing letters to those she cared for. Despite being a grown woman in her late forties, she approached the new skillset of photography with an attractive passion. Starting out, her friends and family were her subjects. They would put on elaborate costumes and pose for her to shoot and develop in her darkroom. However her fame didn’t become recognized until she started producing portraits, many of the subjects being celebrities at the time such as Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf. Even though she didn’t have any prior experience with photography, she became extremely well known for her aesthetically beautiful portraits.
Information Cited: https://iphf.org/inductees/julia-margaret-cameron/
“From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour.”
– Julia Margaret Cameron
Critics Although her work was widely appreciated for its beauty, there were also many critics who called JMC out on her work. They were condescending about what they saw her as, mediocre and misguided. They believed that an aspect of carelessness (or rather, inability) on her part was the reason that her pictures came out blurred, streaked, or scratched. Photographers at this time were perfectionists in the aspects of structure. They wanted their pictures to be closely in focus, fixed poses, no room with creative freedom. JMC danced to the beat of a different drum. Her work was abstract, it was imperfect. She made those blurs and streaks on purpose as part of her aesthetic because to her they captured a sense of vulnerability in her subjects. Her portraits were almost always focused very softly and low lit, therefore in mixing with chemicals, the pictures turned out dreamy, hazy, and almost more of a spirit than a person. She told a story of the person in the picture rather than propping them up with an in-depth pinpoint focus. This thinking and creativity were pioneers in her day and age. JMC would even rub and scratch her pictures after they developed to create the look she wanted. She saw the opportunity for artistry as an expression of something living, rather than stuck.
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“When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting’s own plan. This is often expressed as ‘The brush takes the next stroke.’ In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.”
– Julia Margaret Cameron
“When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.”
― Julia Margaret Cameron
Victorian Age Photography In today’s day and age, filters can be put on anything. The “sepia” look, that anyone can now put on a photograph with the touch of a button, was actually created in the Victorian era. It was produced by a copper plate and it could be pressed on a copy of a picture. Some other types of photography created in this time were negatives, tintypes, and calotypes. JMC used the colloidal glass technique which was a fairly quickly developing (15 minutes) procedure. The wet plate glass would form the image with darkroom features at a faster pace. The difference between negatives and positives came from the use of chemicals on printed images, this altered things like the colour, sharpness, and brightness of the shadows. Digital photography wasn’t produced until the 1990’s, so “editing” was more than a hundred years down the line.
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Poses in the Victorian Era gave a presentation entrance to headshots. Since photography was very expensive and time consuming to develop, the photos from the 1800 years were more of people as subjects and less of buildings or nature. The beginnings of photography were of simple subjects. Poses were meant for people and backgrounds were scarce, because the focus would be directed to the person and possibly their attire, but not a lot of fillers for space. In the late 1800’s, peoples’ creativity arose to decorate a “set” for their image subjects. Things like flowers and other props ventured into the viewpoint to give a sense of character. Engraving picture prints could also add decoration to photos in what would be this century’s version of“post-editing”. Photos weren’t casual or candid, but rather everyone would dress in their best outfits and prepare for pictures of them and their families. Photographers were not easy to find since it was such an expensive hobby, so they would have to make it worth their while. Subjects in this era would also not smile for pictures. Anyone in these images would not be smiling, but rather have a solemn and far off look. Understanding the significance of this era’s art is how one can reflect the iconic artistry of Julia Margaret Cameron. Her love for her craft stood out taller than the people who accused her of being untalented or inexperienced. She created art out of the person, and out of her own passion.
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“The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
– Julia Margaret Cameron
My Work In representation of my own care for her body of work, I decided to recreate some of Julia Margaret Cameron’s portfolio. Originally, I had wanted to specifically recreate the details of the photos and I have tricks that I could do that with a digital camera. For example, scratching and smudging seran wrap over the lens of your camera gives the illusion of wet plate glass photography. Lowering settings on the camera to de-focus the subject would also help represent JMC’s soft portraits. However, I decided against trying to recreate the specifics of her shots and instead taking my own versions of the poses. I loosely based them off of these 1800’s looks but with more focus, and then in post-editing I tried to colour match to fit the look of her photos. I admire Julia Cameron’s work because it’s timeless. Although you can tell they are shot with very old technology, the process of shooting plates in the 1800’s was a long and tedious process. The dedication and passion it took to carry it through and especially with such beauty is immaculate. She pioneered a form of aesthetic photography and is famous for the ethereal vision she exhibited through her work. Without photography, we would have very little grasp on history. To see a picture and really connect with it is to be in the moment with the photographer. Thanks to photos, we have a concept of what events through history looked like in real time. They can be carried on forever to generations and they give an opportunity to those who would never get to witness these events, to see with their own eyes.
We get to be a part of history because we get to experience it through visuals. That, to me, is sensational.
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