Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) was one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 19th century. Best known for her powerful portraits she also posed her sitters – friends family and servants as characters from biblical historical or allegorical stories. Her photographs were rule-breaking: intentionally out of focus and often including scratches smudges and other traces of her process. In her lifetime Cameron was criticised for her un- conventional techniques but also celebrated for the beauty of her compositions and her conviction that photography was an art form. Julia Margaret Pattle was born in Calcutta on 11 June 1815 (fig. 1) the fourth of seven sisters. Her father was an East India Company official and her mother descended from French aristocracy. Julia Margaret was the most flamboyant of the Pattle daughters known for their sociability and artistic eccentricity. Educated mainly in France she returned to India in 1834. In 1836 while convalescing from an illness in the Cape of Good Hope South Africa she met the British astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) who was surveying the skies of the southern hemisphere (p. 107). In 1842 Herschel introduced her to photography sending her examples of the new invention. He remained a life-long friend and corre- spondent on technical photographic matters. During the same stay in South Africa Julia Margaret met Charles Hay Cameron (1795-1880) 20 years her senior a reformer of Indian law and education who would later invest in coffee plantations in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) (fig. 2). They married in Calcutta in 1838 and she became a prominent hostess in colonial society. A decade later. the Camerons moved to England. By then they had four children: two more were born in England. Several of Julia Margaret’s sisters were already living there and had established literary artistic and social connections. (SP)