So, there I was with a free pass in hand for MOMA- (The Museum of Modern Art) -- (thank you Debbie) walking through this beautiful building with a friend of mine in search of Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso paintings. I have seen the Van Gogh's though another excuse to gaze upon perfection is always required. My friend wanted to see the Monet's which are spectacular. Two of his wall canvases of water lilies...beauty and perfection personified. Anyay, there we were walking floor by floor when we saw a photography exhibit featuring the work of Edward Steichen. I had to go in. Am I glad I did. In the first room sat two small photographs; sepia in color and soft in focus. The first one I did not recognize but the second one I immediately did! My friend was talking away as we approached and I had to apologetically say, 'I'm sorry but I must look at those Cameron photos and I can't focus any longer on what you're saying'! We laughed and those around us looked at me strangely which I'm accustomed to. I don't care. Two twenty something year old's hovered around both Cameron photos as I glared at them they moved away to let the loud short large woman through! Yes, me!
"Mrs. Cameron is making endless Madonnas and May Queens and Foolish Virgins and Wise Virgins and I know not what besides. It really is wonderful how she puts her spirit into people". Lady Emily Tennyson in a letter to Edward Lear
Madonna with Child by Julia Margaret Cameron 1864 Albumen silver print MOMA
Untitled (Mary Ryan?) by Julia Margaret Cameron 1867 Albumen silver print MOMA
Although, the sitter in the photo on the right is believed to be Mary Ryan, I am going out on a limb to say that it does not look like the other photographs taken of Mary Ryan by Julia Margaret Cameron. I do not believe it is her but another unidentified woman whom Mrs. Cameron knew. Possibly a part of her staff who worked at Dimbola. The features do not match. Check it out for yourself and form your own opinion in Bob Cotton's blog site, The Julia Secession
This book attempts to answer the questions: Why did Julia Margaret
Cameron become so besotted with Photography? What did she bring to the
art? Why is her work important? Julia Margaret Cameron and the Allure of
Photography is an introduction to, and an overview of Julia and her
work, and provides the art historical and technological context for her
work.
My Thoughts
I am in awe of the beauty of this book.
Not only is it beautifully represented and presented by Bob Cotton he
gorgeously and intellectually writes about the concept of photography and its
importance during the nineteenth-century not only to Julia Margaret Cameron but
brings it into present day culturally while focusing his passion and knowledge
of media and photography as it stands today. He explains it much more cogently than I ever could!
I highly recommend, 'Julia Margaret Cameron and The Allure
of Photography' to anyone wanting to learn not only about the role of Julia
Margaret Cameron as pioneering nineteenth-century photographer but as a woman,
as a wife, as a mother, and as a friend. Bob Cotton has humanized her and
brought her ever so tangibly and lovingly into soft focus!
I have researched The Freshwater Circle of artists and
know a little about Mrs. Cameron and this book taught me about aspects of her
use of the camera and her photographs that I couldn't find anywhere else and
I've read the nineteenth century literature! Bob Cotton has gone to great
lengths to do painstaking research and his passion for photography, cultural
media, and all things 'Freshwater Circle' related comes shining through
clearly! I add this to my research stack of books proudly!
If you are interested in purchasing the kindle version of Julia Margaret Cameron and The Allure of Photography by Bob Cotton, Blurb
The soft cover version is a bit more expensive and harder to find depending upon availability copies may be available at, Cameron House Books
Julia Margaret Cameron & The Allure of Photography (ebook)
by
Bob Cotton
About This Edition:
ebook (iPad iBooks format), 135 pgs
Publish Date:
This book attempts to answer the questions: Why did Julia Margaret
Cameron become so besotted with Photography? What did she bring to the
art? Why is her work important? Julia Margaret Cameron and the Allure of
Photography is an introduction to, and an overview of Julia and her
work, and provides the art historical and technological context for her
work.
Author Biography
Bob Cotton is a media historian. He is currently a visiting senior lecturer at Arts University
Bournemouth, visiting practitioner professor at University of the West
of England, co-director of the Visioneca Festival of Experimental Film,
and a trustee and chair of the Development Committee of the Julia
Margaret Cameron Trust. He was recently Research Fellow at University of
the Arts, London, and has written several books on the media arts,
including Understanding Hypermedia (1993), The Cyberspace Lexicon (1994)
and Futurecasting Digital Media (2002).
I am delighted to welcome, Author and Professor, Bob Cotton, to my corner of all things nineteenth-century and the Victorian era. I first met Bob, online, as he lives on the Isle of Wight and I am in New York City. He contacted me regarding my article I wrote on May Prinsep and a bit of it is quoted in one of the chapters in Julia Margaret Cameron & the allure of Photography. Here's a sample page with my article quoted below. There are forty sample pages available on the book website Blurb where you can purchase it in ebook format, so don't worry, if you're cautious, you can read a sample first! I will link to Blurb at the end of this interview.
Why
did you choose Julia Margaret Cameron as the subject of this book and
how much of her life and work have you included in ‘Allure of
Photography’?
First
of all, I have been interested in the history (and current developments
and future projections) of media for over twenty years. I was elected a
trustee of Dimbola Museum and Galleries two years ago, and began to
research Julia Margaret and early photography in much more detail than
before. Like all research projects, the work was non-linear - some of
the events that influenced the research were: talking to the
researcher/practitioner Karen Grainger about her wet collodion
experiments, recreating the photographic processes that Julia used at
Dimbola; talking to the JMC expert Colin Ford (the founder of the
National Media Museum, Bradford, lead researcher of JMC, author of
catalog raisonne and other core volumes; Talking to Brian Hinton, chair
of JMC Trust, who has written several pamphlets and booklets on JMC and
the Freshwater Circle. Brian was one of the founder members of the
Trust, responsible for saving Dimbola from demolition, and a fund of
local knowledge; absorbing the life and atmosphere of Dimbola and the
friends, trustees and volunteers working there; the attraction that
Dimbola has for interesting people - students, researchers, fans - and
my personal friends; reading Victoria Olsen’s biography of JMC - this
helps enormously in building a picture of her as a woman, as a portrait
photographer, as a mother and as a saloniere. Studying the archive
prints we have at Dimbola, browsing the Dimbola library. All these
components of research informed my task of developing a forward plan for
the Trust. This forward plan focused on looking at the way in which we
communicated our knowledge of JMC and her contemporaries (the
‘Freshwater Circle’), and it became obvious that there was a huge gap to
be filled between our ‘local history pamphlets’ and the specialist
academic volumes intended for the research and curatorial community. It
also became apparent that we needed an overview - a work that would
place JMC in context, place the technology she adopted in context, and
that at least tried to describe the impact of photography on the world
and especially upon the arts - and tried to describe the enormity of
this impact.
In
terms of how much of her life and work? - really, this book is an
overview. About 40% of the book is directly about JMC, there are hardly
any biographical details. The function of an overview in this case is to
provide an introduction to JMC’s work - to answer the question of why
she became so absorbed and inspired by photography - and to ‘situate’
her work in the cultural-aesthetic-technological continuum of the
mid-19th century. It is also necessary to draw attention to the
historical conditions of the time - sunlight the only useful
light-source, water from the well the only solvent, (etc), and
importantly to try to recreate the impact of this miraculous invention -
the first automatic image-making machine in the world.
How long was your research process and did you discover anything about Mrs. Cameron that surprised you?
The
most interesting things that I discovered (for myself as it were),
included: How much ‘photography’ JMC did before she was given her own
camera (lessons and collaborations with Rejlander, Dodgson, Southey,
Wilkie Wynfield etc); how Idylls of the King (1875 edition) was a real
innovation - the first time photographs were used to illustrate a
literary text; JMC’s use of contact prints of flowers as embellishments
to some of her early work; her mammoth attempt at illustrating the 1874
edition of Idylls (and her disappointment with the product); her close
friendship with John Herschel - and how he solved the problem of
‘fixing’ an exposed photograph as early as 1820; her range of friends,
family and advisors from Little Holland House; the extent of her role as
a saloniere at Dimbola; and the beauty and innovation in terms of
variegated focus, posing and composition of her work.The book took three
months or so, with a lot of time spent comparing and testing the
various design tools for print and for ebook (InDesign for print
version, Blurb ebook Creator for ebook). I had to process three
different catches of the digital images, ready for desktop pdf,
printer's high-res edition, and low-res online and ebook edition,
Finding tools for annotations, indices, picture sources etc (still not
properly interactive). I constructed the book as an illustrated
pictorial essay, trying to develop a format that is readable for
students and others who are frightened by long texts, - and a format
suitable for web-reading. Ebooks will develop their own aesthetic and
ergonomics, but this is still (like early interface design), still in
its infancy. The ipad and similar tablets are an ideal vehicle for
hands-on reading and looking. There's still a lot to do in the evolution
of the ideal ebook. Bob Stein's Voyager 'Expanded Books' of the early
1990s were a great landmark in the evolution of ebooks.
As
someone who has read ‘Julia Margaret Cameron and the Allure of
Photography’ and is quoted in a chapter, can you tell me what your
impression is of her ? Has it changed once you wrote the book?
Building
an image of JMC - her character, her manner, her sensibility is, as you
know, a kind of non-linear process of absorbing and synthesizing
descriptions, comments, allusions, images, reminiscences, reported
conversations, comments and anecdotes... and what has emerged for me (my
own intuition about Julia) is of a hugely empathic, highly cultured,
socially and interpersonally skilled lady who is a minor aristocrat,
natural bohemian (her and her sisters, with their Calcutta, Versailles
and Little Holland House upbringing - they used to converse together in
Bengali, sported flowing multi-coloured saris and robes , they made a
huge impact on the social cultured elite of the age. Julia’s personal
enthusiasms and charm made it possible for her to draw-in and entrance
even shy and socially-reticent scientists (thnk of John Herschel - who
became a lifetime correspondent and friend), think of Darwin. She was
the kind of charming, eccentric character who would stage-manage her
soirees, engage her guests in amateur dramatics, tableaux-vivant, party
games - yet also engineer brilliant dinner-party intellectual discourse
(Taylor, Watts, Tennyson - as reported by Annie Thackeray). The image of
her in purple robes, with silver-nitrate-blackened hands chasing after
passersby (potential models) and nabbing and cajoling neighbor’s
children to pose for her. Her bedroom overlooked the main road (Gate
Lane) so she could espy likely sitters from her bay window. She was a
character, an artist, socially adept but not always socially proper,
setting styles in what became known as the aesthetic dress, a
proto-modernist in her photographs, an innovator with her photographic
illustrations, her albums, her hands-on practice, her theatricality, and
her practicality.
Will you continue to write about Mrs. Cameron and those in the Freshwater Circle? What are you writing next?
The
next project will try to provide an overview of her work in the context
of the Freshwater Circle - a kind of pictorial essay on the F.C.
You have a background in Film and Media and ‘Allure of Photography’
goes into great detail about the medium and history of photography and
other photographers. This impressed me very much. Can you please speak
about that aspect of the book?
The
research sector of Media History is still in a fledgling state, so one
is carving out territory that is still mostly virgin. I’m especially
interested in the role that technological innovation plays and the
effects of technology upon the human sensorium - the development of an
aesthetics of the machine age, and the effect of technologies like
high-speed shutters, responsive photo-sensitive agents, multi-camera and
multiple-exposure, immersive audio-visual environments (from The
Phantasmagia of Philipdor and the Dioramas of Daguerre to modern
Happenings and virtual realities) - and many more such instances . My
longer term objective is a complete history or ‘back-story’ of our
contemporary media - tracing all the media-arts-technology roots of 21st
century media, and the ideas and innovations that inspired them.
You can also enquire about purchasing Bob's book at Dimbola Museum and Galleries, as proceeds from the book are a part of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust.
