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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Samatarou (talk | contribs) at 06:15, 23 January 2020 (→‎'Out-of-focus' or 'selective focus'?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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I noticed some discrepancy from source to source on the marriave and "move to england" dates. Without spending *too* much time on this, I updated the page with what looked like the most credible of the sources I was looking at. Alchemist0405

I've seen some original prints by Julia Margaret Cameron. They are far from perfect : dust and hair on the plate, I think this is objective not POV. Ericd 00:13, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You'd still have to source it, e.g. "according to X, Cameron's prints were QUOTE far from perfect, with dust and hair on the plate UNQUOTE". Otherwise we only have your word for it, and we can't cite User:Ericd as a source, firstly because you could be anyone, and secondly because it would be original research. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 11:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added her birthplace and parentage info. Also, the section on her "illustrations" needs to be clarified, since it seems, at times, that the article is talking about actual drawings, and not narrative photographs. -- AKeen 18:07, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced info

This paragraph keeps appearing from time to time. If someone could actually find the source for this it can be included:

"Unfortunately Julia produced her own prints and was unkempt in apperance. Producing her own prints stained her fingers making them look dirty. With a least one vistor had the fear of god put in them when Julia seeing a new subject over- enthusiastically approached them. Julia must have appeared as a beggar from her looks than the "Lady of the House"."

-AKeen 18:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New file File:Julia Margaret Cameron by George Frederic Watts.jpg

Recently the file File:Julia Margaret Cameron by George Frederic Watts.jpg (right) was uploaded and it appears to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think it would be a useful addition, please feel free to include it. Dcoetzee 08:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Luminist

Would it be informative to add mention of David Rocklin's novel "The Luminist" which is based on Cameron's time in Ceylon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.91.204 (talk) 17:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source for allegorical photos

Hello. I'm curious to know what book if any can be used as a source for Cameron's allegorical work. Her (at least) four amazing pictures of Alice Liddell are evidently in this group. (Please drop a note on my talk page if there is ever a reply to this note.) -SusanLesch (talk) 04:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ceylon is not in India

The section entitled Later Life several times refers to Cameron as being in India, statements apparently based on the belief that Ceylon was part of India. It was not, is not, never has been. The government of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was always quite separate from India's. I have therefore changed the text in this section to remove mention of India, replacing it with Ceylon. Do I have to cite sources for this fact? I have referred to the subjects of her pictures as Ceylonese in order to avoid assuming that they were Sinhalese or Tamil (they were likely the former, but I have no way of proving or sourcing that statement). Penelope Coleman (talk) 21:01, 9 July 2014 (UTC)Penelope Coleman[reply]

Seems reasonable. Thanks for the useful edit! Naturenet | Talk 06:21, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Revised url substituted --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 03:16, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Revised url substituted --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 03:26, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

recent edits

So I just became a wikipedia editor a few days ago as part of an Art + Feminism event and didn't realize that it wasn't cool to edit entries that I had a personal interest in. Ie. I wrote a biography of Julia Margaret Cameron in 2003 so a few days ago I went in and made some updates, including (among other changes) adding some more recent exhibits of her work, taking out references to her being an "unattractive" woman, and adding my own published biography to the reference section. So I guess I'm just flagging this for someone else to check my work because I didn't mean to run afoul of the rules. If I did, please instruct, revert, or whatever. Thanks/apologies!Vcolsen (talk) 21:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)vcolsen[reply]

Victoria, I am sure you are a welcome addition here. In fact content expertise is a good thing, as long as one does not shamelessly self-promote one's own work! However I have been citing your work around here for some time. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 01:50, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I put the reference to your work in a more standard format. Thanks for reminding me of your work. However you did delete a lot of material, and there may be some discussion about that. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 02:04, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looking through the deletions I've reverted a couple of them (albeit with some rewriting) as I think they matter. Firstly, I disagree with changing "out of focus" to "soft focus" as they are not the same thing, and ISTM that it is precisely because Cameron (and many Pictorialists) used out of focus technique as a proxy for soft focus that they were derided as incompetent. (By implication that means the other bits that talk of "soft focus" really need clarifying as it is significant to understanding how she was received.) Secondly I restored the Gernsheim stuff (except the bit crediting him with single-handely popularising her, as I think that was just his vanity, her work had already been published by Stieglitz in Camera Work in 1913 for instance). But he did make the crucial observation that being a great photographer is not the same thing as being an influential photographer, as their contemporaries may either not appreciate their work or simply not have heard of them (he puts Hill & Adamson in the same category BTW). I amended the Cunningham quote to reinforce this, since it shows that even a great fan of Cameron only became aware of her in retrospect - Cameron is popular now because her close-cropped style became fashionable from around the mid-20th century, but her influence skipped a few of generations of photographers in between, basically she was a 100 years ahead of her time! Samatarou (talk) 00:45, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

'Out-of-focus' or 'selective focus'?

Samatarou is right to draw the distinction between soft focus and out of focus, but neither term describes her technique effectively; much of Cameron's work uses selective focus. This is especially evident from the summer of 1865 when she started using a larger camera, with 15x12 inch glass plates producing images such as The return after three days of that year and then early in 1866 switching to a larger format still for Summer Days (a big group including May Prinsep, Freddy Gould, Lizzie Koewen, Mary Ryan), dated 1866-1870. Even contact printed, the depth of field with such a format is but a razor's edge and requires much more precise operation than is credited to Cameron by most commentators (most of whom have not tried it for themselves). Focus has to be placed 'here' or 'there' but can't be 'all-over'. Both The Return and Summer Days are sharp, but very selectively, and in examples like Prayer and Praise (1865) the forward tilt of the camera produces sharpness at several, very strategic, points in depth; lips, nose and one closed eye of the Christ child in the foreground and just the eyes of 'Mary' and 'Joseph' in the background at top of frame. That image reveals a highly sophisticated use of focus we see rarely repeated by her peers. It might even have been achieved by titling the lens panel...if her camera was designed that way. We don't know because a difficulty preventing deeper analysis of her technique is that none of Cameron’s cameras survive and the only lens to come down to us is her first, a 'Jamin', made in Paris a Petzval type made specifically for 'soft-focus' portraiture with a severe curvature of field and used for the earlier glass plates approximately 12 x 10 inch (31 x 25.4 cm). It is between usually very sharp areas of focus that the 'roundness of form' that Cameron loved is given expression.
The article needs added a knowledgeable section on the technique of this hugely important artist which she quite evidently warrants and which I hope comes out of this peer review...the term 'soft focus' does her an injustice. Jamesmcardle(talk) 05:53, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Jamesmcardle, from what I recall, this part of her technique was referred to as "soft focus" or "out of focus" much more often than "selective focus" in the reliable sources I've used. That said, you make a good point that the type of focus that she uses might more precisely be described as "selective" and that this distinction may be useful for readers. Her technique overall may deserve more coverage; it is addressed in the article, but it is scattered across several sections. I will have these concerns in mind during the peer review and will look for how this is handled by reliable sources. Thanks for your comments. Qono (talk) 17:24, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Qono There is a reason why contemporary sources describe Cameron's focus as 'out-of-focus', and some later ones 'soft focus'; the term ‘selective focus’ was not in use in Cameron’s time; the earliest mention of the phrase that I can find is 1911, well after her death, in Volume 5, Page 530 of Camera Club of New York; Boston Photo-Clan; Photo-Pictorialists of Buffalo (Society) (1907), American photography, American Photographic Pub. Co.], ISSN 0097-577X

Here are some reliable sources that use the term in relation to Cameron's technique which may be useful in the peer review and in creating a specific section in the article (underlinings are mine):
“During the 1860s, Julia Margaret Cameron's images helped to establish the issue of selective focus as a criterion of peerless practice. The making of “out-of-focus" images was considered an expressive remedy that shifted the artificial, machine-focus of a camera toward a more natural vision. Cameron considered focusing to be a fluid process during which she would stop when something looked beautiful to her eye.”[1]


“Had she been dissatisfied with the indeterminate, selective focus; that she settled upon, she could certainly have modified her equipment or sought an alter native method of working, but her choice was very consciously made.”[2] In the same text there is a discussion of the standard sliding-box camera that Cameron used, the size of her early glass plates (approximately twelve by ten inches) and the qualities of focus of the fixed aperture (f3.6) French-made Jamin lens of Petzval construction of approximately twelve inch focal length, only the centre portion of which was sharp.


“Her portraits are not presented the way our eye sees. The selective focus allows Cameron to direct the viewer’s eye where she wants emphasis, and also reminds us that we are not looking at “real life.” This is a constructed performance. The shallow focus along with the spots, scratches, marks, chemical stains, and other “imperfections” of the print make a viewer unable to look “through” the performance to see only [the sitter].” “Mary Mother [1867] displays Cameron’s characteristic selective focus, a technique that was controversial at the time. The image directs your gaze to linger on the light on her forehead, her profile, her right eye. In order to command such control of the viewer’s gaze, Cameron used techniques that were the opposite of how commercial portrait photographers of the time worked, which was to let in as much light as possible from all directions to reduce the amount of time subjects would have to remain still. So much light, according to Colin Ford, “flattened the sitters’ features and in effect ‘smoothed out’ their characters” (46). One can imagine that a paying customer who wanted a likeness of herself would be reluctant to be still for the amount of time it took [and] the paying customer would not have been interested in an image like the one above. Mary Mother is a performance, not a likeness. Flat light is “photographic”; it merely records what is in front of the lens.”[3]


Susan Kismaric briefly describes a Cameron work with the term ‘selective focus’ on p.73 of Butler, Cornelia H; Schwartz, Alexandra; Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (2010), Modern women : women artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art : Distributed in the United States and Canada by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, ISBN 978-0-87070-771-1


“Because her work was intended to achieve pictorial effect, Mrs. Cameron naturally adapted the photographic technology of her day to that end. Sharp focus was less useful to her than differential, or selective, focus because she sought spiritual meaning rather than particular information from her subjects. Her model was the same as that of Watts : Titian. Cameron's friend Sir Henry Taylor (fols. 4v, 5r, 9r, 25r, 29v) described Titian's method in one of his plays, St. Clement's Eve (1862)”[4]Jamesmcardle(talk) 11:20, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Did Cameron herself say anything about using selective focus (however described)? The most noted proponent of selective focus is surely Emerson who built a philosophy of photography on the principle. It would be interesting to know if Cameron, whose work predated his by about 20 years, anticipated his ideas. Samatarou (talk) 06:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Hirsch, Robert; Safari, an O'Reilly Media Company (2008), Light and lens : photography in the digital age (1st ed.), Focal Press, p. 294, ISBN 978-0-240-80855-0
  2. ^ Julian Cox in Cox, Julian; Ford, Colin, 1934-; Lukitsh, Joanne; Wright, Philippa; Cameron, Julia Margaret Pattle, 1815-1879 (2003), Julia Margaret Cameron : the complete photographs, Thames & Hudson in association with The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, p. 50, ISBN 978-0-500-54265-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Klug, Jennifer M., "“Who has a right to say what focus is the legitimate focus?” Tennessee Williams and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Theatrical Portraits of Women" (2018). Masters Theses. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/theses/904
  4. ^ Cameron, Julia Margaret Pattle; Weaver, Mike; J. Paul Getty Museum (1986), Whisper of the muse : the Overstone album & other photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum, ISBN 978-0-89236-088-8
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