Julia Margaret Cameron British, 1815-1879 Born in Calcutta to a French mother and an English father employed by the East India Company, Julia Margaret Cameron was a key figure in the development of photography both in Britain and abroad. She was sent, under the care of her grandmother, to France for her education. Marriage to jurist Charles Hay Cameron took her back to India in 1838, and to England in 1848, where in 1860 the family finally settled on the Isle of Wight. Three years later Cameron received her first camera, a gift from her daughter, as a way to pass the time while her husband was away on an extended trip to Ceylon. For the next 15 years, Cameron's passion for photography, and her fortunate position among Britain's cultural elite, allowed her to produce a series of portraits, allegories, and illustrations that are among the most admired and influential of photographic images. Frequently marked by a loose, soft style, her portraits of well-known figures, such as Sir John Herschel, Thomas Carlyle, and Ellen Terry, reveal her subject's character in an unusually forceful manner. Her allegories and tableaux often include neighbors and friends like Lord Tennyson and her artistic mentor, the Pre-Raphaelite painter G. F. Watts. In 1874 she illustrated Tennyson's popular long poem Idylls of the King. In 1875, after the death of her daughter, Cameron returned to Ceylon with her husband, joining their five sons. There she continued to photograph until her death in 1879. A later generation was introduced to Cameron's work by Alfred Stieglitz, who reproduced a selection from it in Camera Work. T.W.F.