Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
. . . I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and
at length the longing has been satisfied. Its difficulty enhanced
the value of the pursuit. I began with no knowledge of the art.
I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter,
and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my
hand over the filmy side of the glass. It was a portrait of a farmer
of Freshwater, who, to my fancy, resembled Bolingbroke. The peasantry
of our island are very handsome. From the men, the women, the maidens
and the children I have had some lovely subjects, as all the patrons
of my photography know.
This farmer I paid a half-a-crown an hour, and, after many half-crowns
and many hours spent in experiments, I got my first picture, and
this was the one I effaced with holding it triumphantly to dry.
I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl house
I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were
liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon
new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised
in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon
changed for poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all
in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection.
Having succeeded with one farmer, I next tried two children .
. . and I now produced a picture which I called "My First Success"
. . .
Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My husband from
first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is
my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh
glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause.
This habit of running into the dining room with my wet pictures
has stained an immense quantity of table linen with nitrate of silver,
indelible stains, that I should have been banished from any less
indulgent household . . .1
For more, go to
Julia Margaret Cameron.
1 Cameron, J.
M. (1874). Annals of My Glass House. Reprinted in Heron, L. & Williams,
V. (1996). Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the
1850s to the Present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
