Template:POTD/2022-06-11
Julia Margaret Cameron (11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was a British photographer who is considered to be one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity and literature. Cameron also produced sensitive portraits of women and children. After showing a keen interest in photography for many years, she took up the practice at the relatively late age of 48, when her daughter gave her a camera as a present. She quickly produced a large body of work capturing the genius, beauty, and innocence of the men, women, and children who visited her studio, and created unique allegorical images inspired by tableaux vivants, theatre, 15th-century Italian painters, and the work of her creative contemporaries. Her photography career was short but productive; she made around 900 photographs over a twelve-year period. This portrait of Cameron, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was taken in 1870 by her son Henry Herschel Hay Cameron.Photograph credit: Henry Herschel Hay Cameron; restored by Adam Cuerden