Pre-Raphaelites aesthetics of photographer Julia Margaret Cameron

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Pomona - Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees. 1872. Alice Liddell (1852–1934) - Lewis Carroll’s muse and frequent photographic model—posed for Cameron a dozen times in August and September 1872

Pomona – Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees. 1872. Alice Liddell (1852–1934) – Lewis Carroll’s muse and frequent photographic model—posed for photographer Julia Margaret Cameron a dozen times in August and September 1872

English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is considered one of the best photographers of the 19th century. With delicate aesthetic taste, she has created a lot of pictures of famous people blended an unorthodox technique, a deeply spiritual sensibility, and Pre-Raphaelite–inflected aesthetic. Her work has been almost two centuries remain the sample of Victorian portraitist. Photos of Julia Cameron feature a special spirituality, heroes on her pictures look romantic and dreamy. Her works are stylized traditional portraiture of the second half of the 19th century. Despite the fact that Julia Cameron was engaged in photoart for a short period of time, she was able to make significant progress and to master the skill. She first picked up a camera at age 48, and the next 11 years devoted to art. Her first work relates to 1863, but even today they can serve as a model for contemporary photographers.

A Study. photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 1865–66

Julia Cameron has lived her whole life in an aristocratic environment, so among her friends and close acquaintances were many prominent figures of the Victorian era. For example, she photographed the famous poet Lord Alfred Tennyson, astronomer and photographer John Herschel, Longfellow and others. Julia Cameron loved to shoot actress Ellen Terry, singer of Shakespearean roles, in a variety of scenic images, you can see pictures of King Arthur, King Lear and his daughters, the Roman goddess Pomona and the scene of parting with Lancelot Guinevere.

Cameron portrait of Julia Jackson, later Julia Stephen, Cameron's niece

Portrait of Julia Prinsep Jackson, later Julia Stephen, Cameron’s niece by photographer Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Pattle was born in Calcutta in 1815, the fourth of ten children of Adeline de l’Etang and James Pattle. As a child, she shuttled between India and Europe and received the bulk of her education in Versailles, where she spent much of her early life with her maternal grandmother before residing more permanently in India from the age of eighteen. In 1848 she and her husband of ten years, Charles Hay Cameron, settled in England. There the Pattle sisters enchanted London society with their beauty and eccentricity, attracting many of the most original artistic, literary, and scientific minds of the day.

Circe. photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 1865

Circe by photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 1865

In 1860 the Camerons moved to Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight. A Christmas gift of a camera from her daughter and son-in-law three years later—given with the words “It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater”—led to a decade-long career in photography and more than 1,200 surviving images. It is said that her last word, as she died in Ceylon on January 26, 1879, was “Beauty.”