Julia Margaret Cameron: Victorian Pioneer: 1815-1879

Julia Margaret Cameron by her son Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, 1870 The portrait above is the last photograph taken by Cameron’ s son. It shows his mother aged fifty nine, a well established professional with grown children of her own, an English matron. She is swathed in Indian shawls, a substantial figure who fills the frame. Her hair is graying and uncurled. Her hands are capable and almost rough around the knuckles. Her expression is firm not cold but not warm and yielding either. The portrait emerges from a deep black background, without any details to reveal time or place except for the Indian shawls. This portrait reveals a woman who had stood her ground against the photographic establishment for the past ten years and garnered the celebrities of her age to sit still for her. Cameron had changed, of course, but so had the times. ‘ Yes, the history of the human face is a book we don’t tire of, if we can get its grand truths, & learn them by heart. The life has so muc