Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Henry Taylor', collotype, 1864, printed later but probably before 1884

A photograph of a seated bearded man (Henry Taylor) shown from the shoulders up with his head slightly turned to his right shoulder.

Nevinson Bequest, 1990

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.

Cameron met poet Sir Henry Taylor when he and his wife moved from India to Kent and became her neighbours. He was to remain a life-long friend, public supporter and was Cameron's most frequently photographed male subject.

As the inscription visible on E.2746-1990 and E.2749-1990 indicate, this collotype was made from internegatives (negatives made from rephotographing prints)

Julia Margaret Cameron’s earliest photographic subjects were family and friends, many of whom were eminent literary figures. These early portraits reveal how she experimented with dramatic lighting and close-up compositions, features that would become her signature style.

In May 1865 Cameron used her sister’s London home, Little Holland House, as her photographic headquarters. Her sister Sara Prinsep, together with her husband Thoby, had established a cultural salon there centred around the artist George Frederic Watts, who lived with them. Cameron photographed numerous members of their circle on the lawn. These included artists, writers and collectors and Henry Cole, the director of the South Kensington Museum.

Cameron met poet Sir Henry Taylor when he and his wife moved from India to Kent and became her neighbours. He was to remain a life-long friend, public supporter and was Cameron's most frequently photographed male subject.

The Photographic News condemned Julia Margaret Cameron’s unconventional techniques. ‘We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities … In these pictures all that is good in photography has been neglected, and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art.’

E.2746-1990