Cameron’s photography is notoriously known to be entirely different to conventional photographic portraiture during the Victorian era, because they were more focused on the sitter’s face instead of background objects and props typically used to portray the sitter’s identity in Victorian portraitures.
Aside from making portraits of influential friends, family and acquaintances, Cameron frequently engaged her works on religious narratives too, in order to bring out the dramatic tableaux. Many of these were focused on a specific portraiture known as Madonna and child, which combined her love of art with her role as a maternal figure, whom to be the mother of 5 sons and a daughter, while additionally adopting at least 5 children in her lifetime.
Throughout this exhibition, I had felt as though I have learnt a lot about Cameron’s life, strangely enough, by looking at the expressions of her figures. Kind of like looking into a mirror except, you don’t see yourself- rather, a reflection of someone else. With the help of some brief descriptions beside Cameron’s works, I got the notion of her own personal narrative amongst the expressive features shown in her photography, whereby she, in her autobiography Annals of My Glass House (1874) describes her own work as not only taken from life, but “to the life and startle the eye in wonder and delight.” It is no doubt that she had already delighted me in the hauntingly beautiful depictions of the individual; photography, an art form to Cameron which brought out the very personal relationship between the sitter and the photographer. Their intense gaze shared, or perhaps the lack of it shown only through that very moment, only for that point in time, documented through the photographer’s second eye.
The layout of the display itself was certainly something interesting, it kind of resembled a round maze, making the viewer curious of what’s on the other side of the outer wall. In respects of keeping the original photographs in good condition, the lights were specially made to be low, but despite of that, it was clear enough for the viewer to observe the details in Cameron’s portraitures.
If anything, Cameron’s photography comes out very poetic while also challenging the viewpoints of others at the time. Intriguing as it was, at the same time, some opinions were not quite fair in regards to her gender as there was little awareness of gender equality back in her days, which I ponder to ask; would Cameron be taken more seriously as an artistic photographer if she were a man? Or would the ignorance of traditions still not accept her new approach to photography? As Cameron once wrote, in a letter to her good friend and mentor Sir John Herschel:
“what is focus- and who has the right to say what focus is the legitimate focus.”
After all, is art not something which combines every aspect of one’s history and culture, using every medium presented, and eventually evolving throughout time? Is it not to challenge our perception of what is around us?
Reference list:
- Colin Harding and Tim Clark, co-curators of the Science Museum, Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy exhibition
- Julia Margaret Cameron, Annals of My Glass House (1874, The Royal Photographic Society Collection at National Media Museum 2003)
Angela.M 
