When Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera on her 48th birthday, a passion was born. The images she created are breathtaking, their composition is quite similar to the portraits painted by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Tennyson asked Cameron to photograph a series of photos to illustrate his Idylls of the King. There is currently an exhibit of these images at the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock.
This exhibit will run until June 29, 2008. It included the 24 images that Cameron took in 1874 for Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
For more on Julia Margaret Cameron, visit The Julia Margaret Cameron Trust.
By the way, I should also mention that the photo pictured above was a portrait JMC took of her niece (Julia Jackson) who also happened to be the mother of Virgina Woolf.
Thank you for this! I recently became fixated with the work of JMC. I had no idea that her niece was the mother of Virginia Woolf.
That photo is beautiful. Simply stunning.
Sometimes it seems weird to me to see photos of people who have been dead so long. Or even ( as in recent news coverage) people who have just recently passed. Look at their photos and they are frozen in time, they seem so alive. Even after death there are certain people (Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, certain writers like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Hemingway, I’m sure it’s different for everyone) who have the ability to touch lives even after death. They still inspire. But do they know? I hope so.