Originally posted on The Public Domain Review.
Photograph of a Sinhalese woman by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1875
Leaving her close-knit artistic community on the Isle of Wight at the age of sixty to join her husband on the coffee plantations of Ceylon was not an easy move for the celebrated British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Eugenia Herbert explores the story behind the move and how the new environment was to impact Cameron’s art.
The Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is currently undergoing a revival with a recent exhibition of her work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She has long evoked interest not only because of her distinctive style but also because of her eccentric personality, her dominant — very dominant — role in a circle that in many ways prefigured the Bloomsbury of her grandniece, Virginia Woolf. But there was another strand in her life that was quintessentially Victorian: the imperial. She was daughter, wife and mother of Empire. To top it off, four of her five sisters…
First Night History 
Reblogged this on Nothing Gilded, Nothing Gained–Books & Writing at Middlemay Farm and commented:
What a great find!
LikeLike
History and photography, two of my favourite things combined in this article. I knew little of this woman and her life, but I was aware of some of the intense portrait photos she is famous for. They were ahead of their time, and some are reminiscent of portraits taken in the 1960s by photo-journalists in Africa and Bangladesh.
Faces staring at you from the distant past. Always unnerving.
Best wishes, Pete.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We try to oblige, sir!
LikeLike
Reblogged this on First Night Design and commented:
Re-blogged from my history site.
LikeLike