Julia Margaret Cameron is hip. This would not have astonished her – she had every confidence in her vision as a photographer – but for many decades she has been regarded merely as the female face of the male act, someone who created pretty-pretty photographs of allegorical or religious scenes, with the odd Great Man thrown in as a make-weight.
This may be changing. A Cameron exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery this week which will give an opportunity to reassess the work; with From Life Victoria Olsen gives a look at the life. The life was, in many ways, separate from the art. Cameron worked on photography intensively from 1864 to 1875. She lived, however, from 1815 to 1879, and From Life does not scant on the other 54 years.
Julia Margaret Pattle was born in Calcutta to an eccentric Indian-born employee of the East India Company and his wife, an Indian-born descendant of a Frenchman (and, at four generations’ remove, a Bengali, never mentioned by the family).
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