Faded + Blurred do not only find the modern greats of photography and spotlight them, there is also a look into the early days of photography and one of the more famous is Julia Margaret Cameron
When I came across the work of Julie Margaret Cameron, I knew she had to be first, mainly because she was one of the first photographers out there. She was born in 1815, but didn’t get her first camera until 1863 at the age of 48 as a gift from her daughter. She says she ran around the house trying to find gifts to give this girl because she was so appreciative. How many of us have felt like that after a photo… when we know we have gotten “the shot”? It just ignites something in us and I think that is what happened to her. She couldn’t stop. She became obsessed with her new-found hobby. She would spend hours taking countless exposures, having her subjects sit while she coated, exposed, and processed each wet plate. She wrote, “I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me and at length the longing has been satisfied.” She was very lucky to have a supportive family behind her. She took her coal house and made it into a dark room and turned her hen house into her glass house. She had everyone she knew sit for her.I think one of the reasons she is so important to us today is the fact that she was from a well-connected family. Her friends were people like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Henry Longfellow. She took many photographs of them that we would not have today. She also took a portrait of Alice Liddell who most of you will know as the Alice from Alice in Wonderland.
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Oxford School of Photography 