[1] 
[2] 
[3] 
[4][1] [2] [3] [4](1) "The Kiss of Peace", albumen silver print, 1869.
(2) "Detail from Summer Days," albumen silver print, 1865.
(3) O.G. Rejlander, "Lionel, Emily, Alfred & Hallan Tennyson,"
albumen silver print, c. 1862.
(4) "Julie Jackson,", albument silver print from glass negative,
c. 1865-66.
All pictures courtesy the Hochberg-Mattis Collection.
(Museum of Photographic Arts,
San Diego) For My Best Beloved Sister Mia is an exhibition of photographs
from a photo album that the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron
began with her sister Mia in 1873. Although Cameron's photographs have been
widely seen, this particular album is of great significance in the development
of her work. It not only depicts her family and her friends, but also presents
images by other photographers working at the time as well as images of paintings
and drawings-her artistic influences. The images in this album at one point
were disassembled so that the photographs could be sold individually. For
this exhibition the images have been reassembled in the sequence of the
album so they can been seen as they were originally intended to be viewed.
Cameron was born in Calcutta in 1815. Although educated in France she moved
back to India in 1834 when she was nineteen. In 1848 she and her husband
moved to England. Cameron was part of a large family, the fourth of ten
children, and had a large family of her own. Part of the upper class, Cameron
enjoyed a rich life and made the acquaintence of a number of famous people.
Her career as a photographer began in 1863 when her husband was away on
a trip. To cheer her from her loneliness, her daughter gave her a camera.
Cameron began photographing everyone in sight. Because of the newness of
photography as a practice, she was free to make her own rules and not be
bound to convention. The kinds of images being made at the time did not
interest Cameron. She was interested in capturing another kind of photographic
truth. Not one dependent on accuracy of sharp detail, but one that depicted
the emotional state of her sitter.
Cameron worked with large glass plate negatives. Because she used a negative
plate that was large in size, something that was usually used to shoot the
landscape, making her images required her sitters to sit still for long
periods of time. As this was difficult to do, her images often came out
soft and out of focus. Cameron liked the soft focus portraits and the streak
marks on her negatives, choosing to work with these irregularites, making
them part of her pictures. Although her photographs lacked the sharpness
that other photographers at the time aspired towards, they succeeded in
conveying the emotional and spiritual aura of the sitter. Cameron's ambition
as a photographer was to "secure [for photography] the character and
uses of high art by combining real and ideal, and sacrificing nothing of
truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty."
In 1873 Cameron sent her sister Maria (Mia) Jackson a partially empty photo
album, asking her sister to collaborate with her on the project in the years
to come by adding images, as she sent them, in the places and the sequence
she described. The front part of the album had photographs and portraits
Cameron took of her family and friends, both candidly posed as well as acting
out staged tableaux. The back half of the album contained images by Cameron's
contemporaries like Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Lewis Caroll, as well as
numerous photographs of paintings and drawings.
Although at the time Cameron was seen as an unconventional and experimental
photographer, her images have a solid place in the history of photography.
Her family albums are noteworthy not only as documents of a family history,
but they also provide insights into Victorian society. Most of Cameron's
photographs are portraits. She used members of her family as sitters and
made photographs than concentrated on their faces. She was interested in
conveying their natural beauty, often asking female sitters to let down
their hair so as to show them in a way that they were not accustomed to
presenting themselves. In addition to making stunning and evocative portraits
both of male and female subjects, Cameron also staged tableaux and posed
her sitters in situations that simulated allegorical paintings.
The Mia Album contained both kinds of images. Amongst the photographs in
the album and in the exhibition are some of Cameron's most famous. Included
is The Kiss of Peace, a portrait of a mother and child based on the
gospel story of the Visitation. In the photograph the child gazes down,
while the mother's lips rest casually on her brow. This is a quiet image,
one that projects maternal love. Most of Cameron's photographs have a spiritual
sensibility, and are peaceful and romantic. The mood is sombre and contemplative.
She did not photograph action or care much about backgrounds. It was the
essence of the subject that motivated Cameron's photography.
