Photographic Plate as a Canvas

Julia Margaret Cameron didn’t pick up a camera until she had lived almost half a century and given birth to six children, but she made up for lost time. She created more than 3,000 photographs in about 15 years--from 1864 to her death in 1879--and is widely regarded as one of the most original and accomplished photographers of the 19th century.

Best known for soft-focus portraits of eminent Victorians such as scientist Sir John Hershel, writer Alfred, Lord Tennyson and historian Thomas Carlyle--conceived to show “the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man”--and ravishing images of young women and children, Cameron also staged religious and allegorical scenes inspired by her education in literature and art history.

Cameron was born in Calcutta in 1815--the fourth of seven sisters renowned for their intellectual and feminine charms. A child of privilege, she was largely educated in France and moved to England in 1848 when her husband, Charles Hay Cameron, a jurist and legal reformer, retired. She received her first camera as a casual gift from one of her daughters, but it soon became her passion and the means to creating what she called the “divine art.”

An uppity woman who was well connected in Victorian society, she was dismissed as a dabbler or a hack by male photographers who felt threatened by her innovative work, emotional fervor and self-promotional talents. But Cameron was undaunted. Struggling to learn a new art form and pressing friends and family into service as models, she was determined to express her ideas while elevating photography to high-art status. A lesser-known aspect of her motivation is that she needed to sell pictures to pay her expenses and earn money for her family, whose fortune had dwindled.

Great art, great story. Little wonder, then, that Cameron’s star has risen on the art scene during the last 20 years, or that she is viewed as a proto-feminist. As an artist with enough name recognition to draw an audience, but one who has not been overexposed, she is also overdue for a retrospective.

Indeed, two significant shows are opening this week--a small one at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu and a larger presentation at Scripps College in Claremont--accompanied by a catalog, a book, a symposium, a theatrical performance and a related lecture and discussion series.

First on the agenda is “Julia Margaret Cameron: The Creative Process,” opening Tuesday at the Getty. The exhibition of 38 images--drawn from the museum’s holding of 302 Cameron works--examines her techniques and artistic and literary influences.

Cameron had no interest in using the camera as a device to record facts and details; it was a tool of artistic expression, said Julian Cox, the Getty’s assistant curator of photographs, who organized the show. “Some scholars think she had bad eyesight and was technically incompetent. I believe she set out to evoke the softer outlines and suggestive tones of painting.” Although she was not alone in her attempt to make photographs emulate paintings, her imagery and approach were highly unusual.

“We will have a whole wall of portraits that she made in 1867, one of her most fruitful years,” Cox said. They demonstrate Cameron’s preference for “large heads” that fill most of a frame with a near life-size face, and how she attempted to reveal the character of her subjects with dramatic lighting. Another group of pictures depicts the same person in different positions and costumes, to explore a range of moods and characterizations.

Among other works on view, “The Five Wise Virgins” and “The Five Foolish Virgins” reflect her interest in religious subjects dealing with the role of women, Cox said. While Cameron’s portraits are most highly revered, he is particularly impressed with her exploration of women’s relationships and a theme of “universal sisterhood.”

In conjunction with the show, the museum has published “Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs From the J. Paul Getty Museum.” The small paperback book, containing 55 duotone illustrations and an edited transcript of a colloquium held in 1995, is part of the “In Focus” series on photographers whose work is well represented in the museum’s collection.

The second exhibition, “Annals of My Glass House: Photography by Julia Margaret Cameron,” will open next Sunday at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps. The 66 works on view are all drawn from Los Angeles holdings--42 from the Michael and Jane Wilson collection, 20 from the Getty Museum and four from the Leonard and Marjorie Vernon collection. They highlight Cameron’s most productive period, from 1864, when she took her first successful pictures, to 1874, when she started her brief autobiography, “Annals of My Glass House.”

The Wilsons’ curator, Violet Hamilton, organized the show around thematic groups: portraits of prominent Victorians, Madonnas and children, and illustrations for Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.” Hamilton also wrote the text for the exhibition’s illustrated catalog, which includes Cameron’s autobiography.

The show at Scripps got off the ground last year when gallery director Mary MacNaughton gave the Wilsons a tour of the new facility. Scripps is a women’s college with a strong emphasis on art, so MacNaughton proposed an exhibition of the work of a female photographer from the Wilsons’ collection. They agreed and suggested Cameron.

MacNaughton soon got wind of the Getty’s plan for a Cameron show, but she saw it as an opportunity to join forces in a multifaceted event that could have a larger impact than originally intended. It turned out to be a natural pairing that required no introductions.

Michael Wilson, president and CEO of Danjaq Inc., which produces James Bond films, owes his photography collecting to Weston Naef, head of the Getty Museum’s photography department. They met as students, when Wilson was at Harvey Mudd College and Naef was at Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna). At the time, their future wives, Jane Hurley Wilson and Mary Meanor Naef, were dormitory mates at Scripps. The two couples became close friends while living in New York during the early 1970s, when Weston Naef was a curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Michael Wilson was working as an attorney.

Collecting was in Wilson’s blood, but he had concentrated on books and only dipped into photography as an observer. But in 1977, after he went into the movie business and was living in London, Naef asked him to bid at auction on some photographs for the Met. Wilson protested that he knew nothing about photographs but finally agreed and checked out all 300 items to be offered.

“I didn’t get anything for the Met,” Wilson said of the sale, “but I came away with 60 lots for myself. I was fascinated.”

Since then, he and his wife--who spend much of their time in London--have compiled an inventory of about 5,000 individual photographs and albums, and about 5,000 additional images that he describes as ethnographic, rather than fine art. The bulk of their holding is 19th century Pictorialism, but it includes early 20th century material.

“Collecting photography gives me an opportunity to be deeply involved and make a contribution,” he said. As a relatively new art form, photography still has plenty of room for investigation and scholarship. To that end, he works with his curators and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where he serves as a trustee, to organize traveling exhibitions from his collection--generally accompanied by new publications.

The show at Scripps, scheduled to travel to Santa Barbara in January, is merely the latest in a continuing enterprise for the Wilsons. But for the college, it’s the centerpiece of a multidisciplinary program. A Cameron symposium will be held Oct. 26, from 1 to 5 p.m., featuring Hamilton, Cox, independent scholar Victoria Olsen and Therese Mulligan, curator of photography at the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and Film. A performance of “Freshwater: A Comedy,” a play by Virginia Woolf, will be presented at 8 p.m. In addition, the Scripps College Humanities Institute is hosting a lecture and discussion series, “Our Victorian Contemporaries,” exploring the legacy of Victorian issues and ideas. Programs are scheduled at various times through Nov. 18.

The Getty’s Cameron show is special as well, as a significant landmark. The museum’s first exhibition of photography, in 1986, was “Whisper of the Muse: Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron,” which surveyed the artist’s career in 225 images. Concurrently, Loyola Marymount exhibited 110 images from a Cameron album in the Getty’s collection.

This year’s show was planned as the final photography exhibition in Malibu, before the museum moves all its collections except antiquities to the Getty Center in Brentwood. “We thought it would bring the program full circle,” Cox said. As it turned out, scheduling changes in the Getty’s move left time for one more photography show, so a selection of works from the Sam Wagstaff collection will close out the program.

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“ANNALS OF MY GLASS HOUSE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIA MARGARET CAMERON,” Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont. Dates: Opens next Sunday. Runs Wednesdays to Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Ends Dec. 15. Phone: (909) 607-3397; for information about “Our Victorian Contemporaries,” call (909) 621-8326.

“JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: THE CREATIVE PROCESS,” J. Paul Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. Dates: Opens Tuesday. Runs Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ends Jan. 5. Phone: (310) 458-2003. Parking reservations required.