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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Julia Margaret Cameron
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(1815–79)
The first great portrait photographer. Given a camera by her daughter in 1863, she set up a studio in the chicken house at her Isle of Wight home and converted a coal house into a darkroom. Deciding to concentrate on portraits, she made two crucial decisions; she would take close-ups and she would adjust the daylight for artistic effect rather than maximum intensity.
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This meant torture for her sitters (her average exposure lasted five minutes, and she scorned the conventional headrest), but the results – known later as her 'Rembrandt effect' – looked like real art and made possible a much greater sense of the sitter's character. She had distinguished friends, so her portraits have an added historical importance. Her sitters included *Tennyson, *Browning, *Trollope, *Carlyle, *Darwin, Ellen *Terry and, perhaps her single most powerful image, the astronomer Sir John *Herschel.
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