Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 58.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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Date: 2025-06-17 08:35:23+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: an expressive instrument?
Martin Filler, in "Candid Cameron", New York Review of Books (13 June),
writes about an exhibition in New York of the work of the formidable
Victorian photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). Cameron,
Filler writes, rejected the strictures that had solidified around the
then new medium. "Convinced that a photograph could be the artistic
equal of a painting, she employed techniques that expanded the camera’s
expressive potential." For a peek at the result, see
<https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/06/13/candid-julia-margaret-cameron/>.
Using what is in today's terms most primitive and clumsy equipment--
glass plates that had to be exposed while still wet, a large and heavy
camera, exposure times that required subjects to remain still &c.-- she,
worked with its limitations, coaxing enormous 'expressive potential' from
rebarbative materials to produce astonishing images, a few of
which appear in the NYRB review.
The photographs in the exhibition, from the Victoria & Albert collection
in London, have been published by Thames & Hudson in conjunction with
the V&A in Astonishing Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron.
My point is to ask, in what ways has the expressive potential of
our primitive equipment been realised?
Comments?
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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