An exhibition at Victoria&Albert Museum to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron with more than 100 photographs

‘I write to ask you if you will... exhibit at the South Kensington Museum a set of Prints of my late series of Photographs that I intend should electrify you with delight and startle the world’
–Julia Margaret Cameron to Henry Cole, 21 February 1866
To mark the bicentenary of the birth of #juliamargaretcameron (1815-1879), one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 19th century, the V&A will showcase more than 100 of her photographs from the Museum’s collection. The exhibition will offer a retrospective of Cameron’s work and examine her relationship with the V&A’s founding director, Sir Henry Cole, who in 1865 presented her first museum exhibition and the only one during her lifetime.
Cameron is one of the most celebrated women in the history of photography. She began her photographic career when she received her first camera as a gift from her daughter at the age of 48, and quickly and energetically devoted herself to the art of photography. Within two years she had sold and given her photographs to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) and in 1868, the Museum granted her the use of two rooms as a portrait studio, likely making her the Museum’s first ‘artist-in-residence’.
150 years after first exhibiting her work, the V&A will present highlights of Cameron’s output, including original prints acquired directly from the artist and a selection of her letters to Henry Cole. Cole’s 1865 diary, in which he records going ‘to Mrs Cameron’s...to have my portrait photographed in her style’ will be on view, along with the only surviving Cameron portrait of Cole. The exhibition will also include the first photograph to be identified of Cameron’s studio. Entitled Idylls of the Village, or Idols of the Village, it was made in about 1863 by Oscar Gustaf Rejlander, possibly in collaboration with Cameron, and depicts two women drawing water from a well in front of the ‘glazed fowl- house’ Cameron turned into her studio. The print has been newly identified and has never before been exhibited.
Best known for her powerful portraits, Cameron also posed her sitters – friends, family and servants – as characters from biblical, historical or allegorical stories. The exhibition will feature a variety of photographic subjects, which Cameron described as ‘Portraits’, ‘Madonna groups’, and ‘Fancy Subjects for Pictorial Effect’. These range from Annie, a close-up of a child’s face that Cameron called her ‘first success’, to striking portraits of members of Cameron’s intellectual and artistic circle such as poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, scientist Charles Darwin and Julia Jackson, Cameron’s niece and mother of Virginia Woolf. Also on display will be Renaissance-inspired religious arrangements and illustrations to Tennyson’s epic Arthurian poem, Idylls of the King.
Julia Margaret Cameron will be structured around four letters from Cameron to Cole, each demonstrating a different aspect of her development as an artist: her early ambition; her growing artistic confidence and innovation; her concerns as a portraitist and desire to earn money from photography; and her struggles with technical aspects of photography. This final section will offer insight into Cameron’s working methods – an arduous process which involved handling potentially hazardous chemicals. It will include a group of her most experimental photographs, recently discovered to have once belonged to her friend and artistic advisor, the painter and sculptor G.F. Watts. Cameron’s photographs were highly innovative: intentionally out-of-focus, and often including scratches, smudges and other traces of her process. In her lifetime, Cameron was criticised for her unconventional techniques, but also appreciated for the beauty of her compositions and her conviction that photography was an art form.
The exhibition is part of a nationwide celebration of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work during her bicentenary year, including the exhibition #juliamargaretcameron: Influence and Intimacy at the Science Museum’s Media Space, which displays prints given by Cameron to the astronomer Sir John Herschel, and a series of exhibitions and events at Cameron’s former home, Dimbola Museum and Galleries, on the Isle of Wight.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Julia Margaret Cameron is free to attend and takes place in The Photographs Gallery 

It is curated by Marta Weiss, Curator of Photographs at the V&A 

The V&A holds over 250 of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs, including 88 that the 
Museum acquired directly from her. Objects from the collection can be viewed in the Prints 
& Drawings Study Room – details can be found at vam.ac.uk 

The V&A was the first museum in the world to collect and exhibition photography as an art 
form. The Museum now holds the UK’s national collection of the art of photography which is one of the largest and most important in the world, comprising over 500,000 photographs. 

The work is international in scope and spans the whole history of the medium, from one of
the very finest photographs taken in 1839, when the medium was invented, to the present.
The V&A is open daily from 10.00 to 17.45 and until 22.00 on Fridays 

The exhibition is accompanied by the book #juliamargaretcameron: Photographs to electrify 
you with delight and startle the world, by Marta Weiss. Published by Mack in partnership 
with V&A Publishing, £25 

The V&A will host a one-day #juliamargaretcameron conference on 15 January 2016 

Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy, in the Media Space at the Science 
Museum from 24 September 2015 to 28 March 2016, will explore the vibrant life and genius of the trailblazing British artist. This free exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of Cameron’s birth will present her bold and expressive portraits, including the only existing print of her iconic Iago (1867), alongside unique objects from her archive.

Julia Margaret Cameron
Supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation
This donation was made possible by the American Friends of the V&A
28 November 2015 – 21 February 2016
www.vam.ac.uk/juliamargaretcameron | juliamargaretcameron