Julia Margaret Cameron - Capturer la beauté

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) has long been recognised as one of the most innovative and influential photographers of all time. She was among the first to use the close-up, made portraiture her favourite subject and did not hesitate to deliberately use blur. Keen to use photography as a means of artistic expression rather than a means of documentation, Cameron sought inspiration in art as diverse as Italian Renaissance painting and contemporary Victorian poetry, and cherished beauty above technical perfection.

Cameron received his first camera from his daughter in 1863, at the age of 48, and his response to the gift was immediate: “From the first moment I handled my lens with tender ardour, and it became to me a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour”. Over the next eleven years, Cameron produced thousands of photographs, exhibited abroad and published two books. Photography was Cameron’s link with many of the great writers, artists, scientists and thinkers of his time, including the naturalist Charles Darwin and the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Among his subjects were several studies of Alice Liddell, who as a child posed for the photographer and writer Lewis Carroll and inspired the adventures of Alice in Wonderland.