Julia Margaret Cameron's career as a photographer began in 1863 when her daughter gave her a camera. Cameron began photographing everyone in sight. Because of the newness of photography as a practice, she was free to make her own rules and not be bound to convention. The kinds of images being made at the time did not interest Cameron. She was interested in capturing another kind of photographic truth. Not one dependent on accuracy of sharp detail, but one that depicted the emotional state of her sitter.
Cameron liked the soft focus portraits and the streak marks on her negatives, choosing to work with these irregularities, making them part of her pictures. Although at the time Cameron was seen as an unconventional and experimental photographer, her images have a solid place in the history of photography.
Most of Cameron's photographs are portraits. She used members of her family as sitters and made photographs than concentrated on their faces. She was interested in conveying their natural beauty, often asking female sitters to let down their hair so as to show them in a way that they were not accustomed to presenting themselves. In addition to making stunning and evocative portraits both of male and female subjects, Cameron also staged tableaux and posed her sitters in situations that simulated allegorical paintings.
Physical description
Photograph of a child (Kate Keown) with grapes and leaves arranged upon her head, in close-up and slightly out of focus, with the subject looking straight into the camera against a dark background.
Place of Origin
Isle of Wight, England (photographed)
Date
1865 (photographed)
Artist/maker
Julia Margaret Cameron, born 1815 - died 1879 (photographer)
Materials and Techniques
albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Marks and inscriptions
From Life Julia Margaret Cameron / Circe / 'Who knows not Circe / daughter of the sun'
Circe, study for head of. / (Girl, Portrait of)
Studies for painting
X311 45140 Photographs by Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron, c.1864-75. "Circe".
'REGISTERED PHOTOGRAPH / SOLD BY / MESSrs/ COLNAGHI / 14 PALL MALL EAST / LONDON'
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm image, Width: 202 mm image, Height: 34 cm mount, Width: 26.7 cm mount
Object history note
Gift of the artist, 27 September 1865
Descriptive line
Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Circe' (sitter Kate Keown), albumen print, 1865
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Julian Cox and Colin Ford, et al. Julia Margaret Cameron: the complete photographs. London : Thames and Hudson, 2003. Cat. no. 983, , p. 410.
Coe, Brian & Haworth-Booth, Mark. A Guide to Early Photographic Printing Processes. London: The Victoria and Albert Museum in association with Hurtwood Press, 1983.
The full text of the entry is as follows:
"Julia Margaret Cameron British 1815-79
Circe 1864-65
Gold toned albumen print from wet collodion negative
Signed, titled and inscribed by the photographer on the mount:
'From Life Circe "Who knows not Circe / Daughter of the Sun"'
P & D Colnaghi stamp on mount, lettered 'Registered Photograph'
244 X 202 mm Mus. no. 45,140 Given by the photographer
Mrs Cameron's technical skills as a photographer were more limited than her imagination and many of her photographs are effective in spite of their imperfections. The limited depth of field of her portrait lens used at full aperture, and the long exposure times, combine to produce a softness of detail unusual for the period - although it was to become a fashion at the end of the century with the rise of 'impressionist' photography. Many of her photographs, including this one, show a crêpe-like pattern in the image; this almost certainly results from too thick a coating of collodion on her plate. This is a case, perhaps, in which her imperfect techniques contributed by happy accident to the effect of the final result. Very large numbers of mounted copies of her photographs were sold or distributed, either printed on albumen paper - as in this example - or by the carbon process (see the example of Etienne Carjat's portrait of Charles Baudelaire, Mus. no. 1190-1980).
Mrs Cameron's career began with the gift of a wet collodion camera and darkroom equipment from her daughter and son-in-law in 1863. Her portraits boldy revived a tradition of artistic imprecision in photography (see Gustave Le Gray's example 'In the Forest of Fontainebleau' of 1851, Mus. no. 68,007) and carried it to an extreme of expressive intent. Her hall-mark is the extreme close-up thrown slightly out of focus. Her methods veiled detail by optical means (rather than by retouching, which spoils much portrait photography of the later collodion era). In the 1850s and early 1860s some photographers, notably Claudet, had sought means of softening the ultra-sharp and often unflattering delineation of physiognomy which was thought of as a problematic feature of the collodion process. Mrs Cameron's intentions were clearly to draw from her sitter's ideal, symbolic or universal qualities. In this photograph the title invites us to find a young girl (Kate Keown, born in 1857) the imprint of the sorceress daughter of the sun, preparer of the magic cup whose contents changed the companions of Odysseus into swine. Characteristic of many of Mrs Camerons's portraits is the dark background from which the head emerges, lit by diffused light (although, of course, some of her major portraits are lit starkly and dramatically).
Kingsley, Hope with contributions by Riopelle, Christopher Seduced by art : photography past and present London: National Gallery, 2012
Exhibition History
Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present (CaixaForum, Barcelona 22/02/2013-19/05/2013)
From Infancy to the Green Years (The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts 04/12/2010-13/02/2011)
Materials
Photographic paper
Techniques
Albumen process; Wet collodion
Subjects depicted
Grapes; Keon, Kate ('Kittie')
Categories
Portraits; Children & Childhood; Photographs; Myths & Legends
Collection code
PDP
