The Photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron with Sarah Norris
12 - 1pm
£10 (£9 for Friends)
[ Talk )
Join Head of Collections, Sarah Norris, for a talk in the Print Room to explore the groundbreaking work of Julia Margaret Cameron, its historical context and continuing significance.
The collection of Anne and Angus Hewat, accepted in lieu of inheritance tax, includes an important group of photographs by pioneering British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron [1815 – 1879) which are currently on display in our Print Room exhibition ‘Julia Margaret Cameron to Eileen Agar: The Hewat Collection’.
Anne was the great-great-grandchild of Julia Margaret Cameron and the group of photographs, many hand annotated by Cameron herself, give a fascinating and personal insight into a body of work with lasting significance to modern and contemporary art practice.
Cameron came late to photography, receiving her first camera as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law in 1863 aged 48. The new discipline of photography became a passion and she left a substantial body of work that included portraits of some of the most famous writers, poets and artists of the day as an extraordinary testimony of the Victorian period.
Like many Victorian photographers, Cameron made carefully staged allegorical and illustrative studio photographs referencing the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite paintings of the period. She created her own unconventional aesthetic, embracing the technical and formal possibilities offered by the medium. This includes blurring and soft focus and presented a creative originality of composition that confirms her leading role in the history of photography.
