Artist Research - Julia Margaret Cameron

Artist Research - Julia Margaret Cameron - Influence and Intimacy Exhibition

During Thursday's session, we went up to London to go to some photography exhibitions which were on display in the Science Museum in South Kensington. One of the photographers who had an exhibition there was Julia Margaret Cameron. She was born in 1815 in India and was a English photographer who was well known at the time for her portraits of celebrities. The exhibition centred around the Herschel Album (1864) which was a sequence of 94 images which she considered to be her best work to date. The images consisted of expressive portraits of influential friends and family members.

Three of Julia Margaret Cameron's Images from the Exhibition -

Below are three images which were featured in the exhibition.

I liked this image from the exhibition as I thought it showed a different and original element of portraiture as I had never, until now, thought of getting an individual to look down when photographing them for portraiture. I feel that this shows a different perspective of the face and in this case looks extremely effective and thought provoking. I like the image as we are only able to see the mans face and therefore can make no assumptions of his lifestyle through looking at his surroundings or clothing. I think that this makes the audience analyse the man's feelings more deeply as there are no clues about his lifestyle or mood in the surroundings and therefore one has to look at his facial expressions. I like this image and thought it was a very effective portrait.

This image was also one which caught my eye in the exhibition. Although this image is not usually the type of photography which I like, I think it is very effective and makes you want to know or find out about the individuals lifestyle.  I like the way you are unable to see the girls setting as this makes the audience have to make an assumption about her lifestyle and feelings based on just the facial expressions and clothing. In this way, I think the image is very effective at making the audience think more carefully about the images.

This photograph was also part of the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition. This was another of the images which caught my eye as I feel that is thought provoking as it makes you wonder what the woman in the image is both thinking and feeling. I like the composition of the image by means of the individual not looking directly into the camera and instead looking towards the bottom left corner. This ambiguous direction of the eyes makes the viewer wonder what she is looking at and as a result, start to wonder about what she is feeling and thinking about. When I examine the image, I believe that the woman is possibly in thought and is thinking about perhaps something tragic or upsetting due to the fact that she has such a solemn look on her face. Like the other images, I also like how you are unable to see the background as this forces the audience to consider deeper analysis of the individual by taking into account her clothing as well as her facial expressions and what you can see as her body language.

Evaluation

Overall, I think that Julia Margaret Cameron's images are effective and thought provoking but do not feel they are very inspirational for me personally and find them to all be quite similar to each other which for me, makes them become boring. However, I do like the natural positioning of the subjects in the photographs and also like the brown colour schemes as this would help to make some of my own images appear old like her images.