Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy – Science Museum

The Science Museum‘s Media Space is currently home to two exhibitions, one of which focuses on one of my favourite Victorian photographers. Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy, which is free to visit, contains pictures from the National Photography Collection, taken largely from the Herschel Album (1864), 94 images which Cameron compiled into a book, feeling that they were her finest. Originally a gift to the scientist Sir John Herschel, Cameron’s friend and mentor, the works still have a great deal of power even after all these years.

I first came across Julia Margaret Cameron’s work during a holiday on the Isle of Wight. She took up photography relatively late in life, when she was living in Dimbola Lodge on the island. I was fascinated by her work, and this exhibition, which also includes her camera lens – the only surviving piece of her photographic equipment – and handwritten autobiographical notes, reminded me why. The photographs from the Herschel Album, and those Cameron took later in life in Sri Lanka, are beautiful, artistic and imaginative, taking inspiration from fairytales and Biblical stories.

Open until 28 March next year, this is the first of two exhibitions in South Kensington mounted to mark the 200th anniversary of Cameron’s birth. The second opens at the V&A on 28 November.