Museum Home Past Exhibitions Julia Margaret Cameron, Photographer

October 21, 2003–January 11, 2004 at the Getty Center

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"My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty."
—Julia Margaret Cameron

Paul and Virginia / Cameron
audio Listen to a discussion of this photograph.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) was among the most original British photographers of the 19th century. At the age of 48 she marched bravely into the awkward intricacies of photography—with its cumbersome cameras, unwieldy glass plates, and precarious developing processes—finding in its practice an ideal outlet for her creative talents.

This exhibition draws from the major public and private collections of Cameron photographs in the United States and Great Britain. The assembled works reveal the breadth and ambition of an artist who, in a career that lasted little more than a decade, produced one of the most significant bodies of work in the history of photography.

Exhibition organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London in collaboration with the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford.