See: Corresponding PechaKucha PowerPoint Presentation: Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879) did not start taking pictures until she was 48 years old but managed to capture over 900 images throughout a span of 12 years and established herself as a major influence in Victorian-era photography. Most of Cameron’s works are close-up portraits of men, women and children.
Cameron utilized different techniques to characterize each of her subjects. For example, many of her portraits of well-known and respected men are sharp and have dramatic lighting; the backgrounds are usually featureless in order to accentuate their figures (see Sir John Herschel (1979)). On the other hand, the portraits of women are soft in focus and typically have less dramatic lighting, which can evoke a sense of femininity and gentleness (see Sadness (1864)). She depicts children in a similar manner as her female subjects, with even lighting and soft focus but occasionally with certain props or costumes to portray them as angelic and pure.
Another notable feature of Cameron’s body of work is her series recreating scenes or characters from religious, historical, or literary contexts. The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1864) is one of Cameron’s more famous examples of this (paired with poetry written by her friend Alfred Lord Tennyson. The posing of the two subjects in an embrace illustrates the implied connection between them and telling the viewer that these people are dear to each other. Additionally, the candid nature of the pose adds to the realism of the image, as if the viewer is watching the actual Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere embrace for the last time before they part ways. The vignette and dramatic lighting accentuates the characters’ profiles and adds to the drama of the image. This photograph demonstrates the level of detail that Cameron put into not only in this picture, but in all of her images.
References:
- Cox, Julian. “The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.” The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/58710/julia-margaret-cameron-alvin-langdon-coburn-the-parting-of-sir-lancelot-and-queen-guinevere-british-negative-1874-print-1910/.
- Gaylord, Kristen. “Julia Margaret Cameron: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org/artists/932.
- “Julia Margaret Cameron.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron.