Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron did not own a camera until she was 48. It was the gift of a sliding-box camera for Christmas, from her daughter and son-in-law in 1860, that prompted Cameron to start photographing her friends and family – a who’s who of the Victorian cultural elite, from Charles Darwin and Thomas Carlyle to John Herschel and Cameron’s next-door neighbour on the Isle of Wight, Alfred, Lord Tennyson – in a distinctive, dramatic style. Drawing on Old Master paintings to create carefully composed tableaux, Cameron nudged photography into fine art: in Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die! (1867), for instance, the subject of the painting – Cameron’s maid, Mary Hillier – cuts a pre-Raphaelite figure, rendered strangely marmoreal by Cameron’s lens. This touring exhibition, produced by the Victorian and Albert Museum, brings her work into focus for New Yorkers (30 May–14 September).

Find out more from the Morgan Library’s website.
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Annie (1864), Julia Margaret Cameron. Photo: © The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Mary Hillier (1873), Julia Margaret Cameron. Photo: © The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Astronomer John Frederick William Herschel (1867), Julia Margaret Cameron. Photo: © The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum