Profiles the life and work of a nineteenth century pioneer of photography and offers a selection of her portraits of women

Bringing together three of the most important early writings about Julia Margaret Cameron—her own autobiographical fragment, "Annals of My Glass House," the biographical essay by Virginia Woolf, and the pathbreaking appreciation by Roger Fry—this book is essential for anyone interested in Victorian culture and photography. It is being published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of her birth, the 150th anniversary of her most extensive exhibition, and two major new exhibitions: Julia Margaret Cameron, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age, at Tate Britain. Illustrated with over 40 of Julia Margaret Cameron’s greatest photographs, and with an introduction and notes by Tristram Powell.

According to one of Julia Margaret Cameron’s great-nieces, “we never knew what Aunt Julia was going to do next, nor did anyone else.” This is an accurate summation of the life of the British photographer (1815–1879), who took up the camera at age forty-eight and made more than twelve hundred images during a fourteen-year career. Living at the height of the Victorian era, Cameron was anything but conventional, experimenting with the relatively new medium of photography, promoting her own art though exhibition and sale, and pursuing the eminent personalities of her age—Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, and others—as subjects for her lens. For the first time, all known images by Cameron, one of the most important nineteenth-century artists in any medium, are gathered together in a catalogue raisonné. In addition to a complete catalogue of Cameron’s photographs, there is information on her life and times, initial experiments, artistic aspirations, techniques, small-format images, albums, commercial strategies, sitters, and sources of inspiration. Also provided are a selected bibliography of publications on Cameron, a list of exhibitions of her work held both in her time as well as our own, and a summary of important collections where her pictures can be found.

"Cameron's transition from enthusiastic novice to accomplished artist is revealed in this sensitive study of the woman behind the camera. Colin Ford's unique appraisal of her life and work firmly establishes Julia Margaret Cameron as one of the greatest photographers of all time."--BOOK JACKET.

This introduction to the greatest women photographers from the 19th century to today features the most important works of 60 artists, along with in-depth biographical and critical assessments.

This anthology is dedicated to pictures of women taken by women. It begins withhotographs by the two great female photographers of the 19th century, Clementna Lady Hawarden and Julia Margaret Cameron, and covers a period of over 100 yars to the present day.;Some 160 images by 90 photographers present us with th entire spectrum of female self-definition both behind and in front of the camra. As such, the four major themes of social reality, the family, the female bdy and virtual reality come to the fore with their multifarious pictures fromhe worlds of art, literature, fashion, dance and show business. There are selfprotraits as well as female photographers' portraits of female photographers,aughters, mothers and, of course, several important female figures including Vrginia Woolf, Greta Garbo, Martha Graham, Simone de Beauvoir, Maria Callas, Maonna, Hillary Clinton, and even Her Majesty the Queen.

Examines both theatrical and staged art photographs, demonstrating their role in fixing and unfixing Shakespearean authority.