Julia Margaret Cameron – Master of Photography
- Mat
- Apr 10
- 2 min read
I loved Julia Margaret Cameron's photos before I ever saw them. It was her story that got me.
She was handed a camera when she was 48. But not a camera like you and I have. It was 1863. There were no iPhones. There was no film. There were only big glass plates, soaked in chemicals, loaded into a huge wooden box.
Julia spent an entire month experimenting with glass plates, lenses, and developing chemicals before she got a single image that worked. Imagine that: a whole month just to make one photograph.
Her era pioneered photography and was obsessed with sharp, exact representations.
She went in another direction. She wasn’t trying to show you exactly what someone looked like; she was after the inner person.
At a time when photography, by its very technical and chemical nature, wasn’t even considered art, she treated it like one anyway.
Her working methods were unconventional. The scratches, swirls, fingerprints, bits of fabric—things that should have been mistakes—became part of the image.
She moved the camera closer, let focus fall away, allowed motion to blur the edges, and drew on myth, painting, and biblical themes to push past the literal surface.
In a medium defined by precision and process, she sought something human, and in doing so, her work helped turn photography into an art form.
“When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting’s own plan. This is often expressed as ‘The brush takes the next stroke.’ In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.” – Julia Margaret Cameron
Mat Coker is an educator and family photographer based in Ontario, Canada.
“The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Margaret Cameron
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