Ashmeen
Hoonjan
Photography Unit 22
Portraits
Julia Margaret Cameron was a professional portrait photographer born in Ceylon. As her work was based in the 1860s/70s her work was not in colour, it was either in black and white or sepia/coffee stained tone. The portraits themselves were interesting, they were either telling a story or a story was told through a model, especially the photographs of portraying beauty. Overall i really liked Julia's work her photographs are inspiring and create an elegance about them.​
About Julia Margaret Cameron;
Here I have researched Julia Margaret and annotated 2 of her photographs that were inspiring to me.
Julia Margaret
The man is a poet, and was a good friend as well as a neighbor of Julia Margaret; Henry Taylor was his name and was an inspiration to Julia, for her to capture such a deep meaning within the image, and the essence of the man was essential, as she knew him so well. The photograph conveys the ‘greatness’ of Henry Taylor and portrays the wise nature of the man, from the way he is presented in the photograph. Margaret has positioned Henry to the left of the image and has placed his hands on his laps; hence the time of the photograph; 1864. Julia really wanted to express the knowledge that Henry Taylor had, so by positioning him in the middle of the photograph and turning him to the side shows that he must have been wise; looking into his own thoughts. The background is a dark colour, this must have been purposely done dark as well as Henrys clothing, knowing that they would turn out black because it was a print from wet collodion-on-glass negative. The dark background was very effective because it contrasted Henry Taylor’s face, which was much lighter in colour, including tones of grey and white, which really brought out his long beard and hair, showing his age. The knowledge he has gained through the years therefore becomes the main focus of the image. Henry Taylor was one the most photographed people by Julia Margaret; Julia tended to take photographs of just her own family and friends, this was because she knew them well, so by using them as the subjects she able to convey the meaning of the subject successfully and effectively through the photograph.
This Photograph is named after a stanza in a poem; ‘call, I follow, I follow, let me die!’ 1867. It is a strong image, in terms of the meaning it portrays, conveying a lost of love, trying to find someone who is special to her. The way Julia has positioned her head to the side of the image brings the head in focus, which is one of the things we look at first, this is because of how the light is positioned, but the contrast of the dark background and her simple black cloth around her body enhances her head more. This then leads us to the neck of her body, the defined collarbone suggests beauty and creates a line, which becomes lighter towards the right of the image. This is effective because we are left to focus on the facial expression, which shows that she has maybe lost somebody close to her heart, this is emphasized through her weary eyes and the stretch of her collarbone, implying that she is hurt through her loss, but still has hope. The photographic features, such as, the composition of the lady is in the middle of the image, but because of the light it is more focused to the top of the image, this allows us to draw in the mystery of what the subject is trying to search for; what is looking at? Creating the mystery that we insist to know, Julia has done this on purpose so that we are able to question the image, which successfully makes us engaged with the image itself. This image of one of the few that she ‘entrusted her negatives to the auto type company’, the company produced and sold carbon prints of Julia’s images, the reason for doing this was her hope of success and carbon prints are much more permanent than albumen-silver prints.