Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer born in 1815. She was known as a loving and generous person who had great relationships with not only friends and families but also strangers. She did after all, adopt five orphans as well as a young beggar. She had a husband to raise her children with, but her husband eventually took her sons and left to oversee their coffee crop business. It was during this time when Julia experienced depression and loneliness. In the midst of this dark time, Cameron was given a camera as a gift, a present that would change her life. She began experimenting with photography and began exhibiting them. As a woman of literature, poetry, and other arts, she found ways to implement these scenes into pictures. What she was known most for, however, were her portraits. She aimed to capture an inner experience and feeling of her subjects to accompany the outer image. What made her work revolutionary was her intentional softening (rather than sharpening) of her images. Although many criticized her, today many people use her softening method to produce expressive images as well.
The photographer was chosen by my group. Julia Margaret is inspiring in showing how someone who came from very little took full advantage of new camera technology to have a lasting impression in the artistic world. Her photos were most special in that they were derived from another art, literature. She took a long history of the art of words and brought them to life with elaborate and decorated pictures. What was only imagination before became a true visual depiction.
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