Magda Keaney on Julia Margaret Cameron

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed curator, author, and expert in photography, Madga Keany.

Currently the Head Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Magda was most recently Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and before that, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery London, where she lead the realisation of a major re-presentation of the Photographs Collection as part of the museum’s rehaul.

Keany has curated shows and published texts on Australian art, design and social history, photography that ranges from the Victorian period to fashion, conflict and portraiture, solo presentations of portraits by Irving Penn, among many others. She has written for the groundbreaking Know My Name project, that put women artists in Australia on a global stage as well as for Cindy Sherman, A World History of Women Photographers, and more.

…but it was her exhibition last year that really grabbed my attention: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream in', that brought together the two photographers working 100 years apart, from very different worlds, circumstances and contexts, but which showed how these pioneering women shaped the medium, with their dreamlike pictures imbued with beauty, symbolism, classicism, transformation and more…

So today, I couldn’t be more excited to delve into the life of the 19th century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who, aged 49 in 1863, picked up a camera and, largely self-taught, crafted her distinct bohemian style pictures with that hazy sepia glow, that proved to not only be influential in Victorian Britain, but have a huge impact on photography at large. As Cameron once said:

“My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.”

And I can’t wait to find out more.

People mentioned:

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) John Herschel (1792–1871)

Artworks:

Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie, 1864; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O81145/annie-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/

Julia Margaret Cameron, Pomona, 1872; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433678/pomona-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/

Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1867; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269434

Julia Margaret Cameron, The Astronomer, 1867; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433637/the-astronomer-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/

Julia Margaret Cameron, Ellen Terry, at the age of sixteen, 1864 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269433

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