Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 19th century. She was born in 1815. But she didn't take up photography until the 1860s. In 1863, she was 48 years old and she was given a camera as a present. She was an amazingly energetic woman and she just threw herself into photography.
She was a pioneering portrait photographer. She worked exclusively in portraiture and she photographed many of the leading intellectuals and artists of her own time. She also made staged photographs of tableaus based on stories.
from literature or history and also made numerous religious subjects as well. Her sitters were drawn from her intellectual and artistic circle and as well as her own household staff she photographed her own domestic servants repeatedly and she was also a wonderful photographer of children. In 1865, the South Kensington Museum acquired from Julia Margaret Cameron 114 photographs. These photographs are still in the museum's collection and today the V&A has over 250 photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Our Cameron holdings are really some of the treasures of our collection and by studying these original photographs we can learn so much more about her process, about her intentions. about what she was trying to do with these photographs, how she wanted them presented, and how they might have been understood at the time that she was making them. Not only did Julia Margaret Cameron exhibit her photographs at the South Kensington Museum in 1865, the same year that the museum collected her work, in 1868 she used two rooms at the museum as a studio, perhaps qualifying her as its first artist in residence.