VICTORIAN PHOTOGRAPHS OF FAMOU

by Julia Margaret Cameron

Book.

Genres: Photography

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for Arthurian and similar legendary themed pictures.

Cameron's photographic career was short, spanning the last eleven years of her life. She did not take up photography until the age of 48, when she was given a camera as a present. Her work had a huge impact on the development of modern photography, especially her closely cropped portraits which are still mimicked today. Her house, Dimbola Lodge, on the Isle of Wight can still be visited.

Reviews

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virginia Woolf’s entertaining introduction on her great aunt’s life turns out to contain some errors that needs an editors note to correct them, amusing in itself! Most of the photographs are old men with beards, lovely young women and children, Victorian values I guess.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Cameron's work, and embarked upon this tome as I was certain there was a lot of it which I hadn't yet seen. (There was.) First published in 1926, this volume has witty and charming introductions by both Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry respectively, and a foreword which discusses her favoured photographic methods. Cameron photographed no end of distinguished (and heavily bearded) men, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Robert Browning to Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin. Her images, particularly of the women and children in this collection, are striking and often beautiful. A lovely, lovely collection.

[Avis Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has too much Victorian sentimentality for my taste.