Julia Margaret Cameron, née Pattle, was born in Calcutta on the 11th June 1815. Known for her diffused portraits of eminent Victorian men and women, as well as her allegorical images, she is considered to be one of the most important portrait photographers of the 19th century.
Cameron took up photography as a main occupation in 1864 at the relatively late age of 48, after receiving a camera as a present from her adult daughter. However, she had already formed an existing interest in photography, having experimented with the artform as early as 1850. She regarded her photography as an artform, writing to her friend, Sir John Herschel: "My aspirations are to ennoble photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art…" To this end, Cameron manipulated her photographs and technique to draw out the pictorial tendencies in her work. If she was unhappy with an image, Cameron would scratch lines into a negative and paint the collodion to meet her expressive goals. She also chose to create a slight blur in many of her photographs, by not tightening her lens to the same extent as many photographers of the day, and eschewing devices such as head restraints for her sitters.
The South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria & Albert Museum) collected an extensive number of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs during her lifetime, even offering her the use of two rooms in the gallery in 1868. The museum’s website writes that this: “perhaps qualif[ies] her as our first artist in residence.”