Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary or heroic themes. Julia Margaret Cameron was 48 when she was given a camera by her daughter and son-in-law in 1863. She was a largely talented, highly intelligent, free-spirited, eccentric, financially comfortable English woman who took up photography as a personal adventure, as she might have taken up philanthropy or rose culture. The photographs she made working at first by trial, error and bossiness were, she absolutely insisted, Art with a capital A. She ignored the carping of critics who put down her dreamy focus to technical incompetence, and reserved a special de haut en bas putdown in her memoir for the unfortunate lady who tried to commission a studio portrait, as if she were a mere commercial hack.

Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron