The Frick Art & Historical Center is to present For my best beloved Sister Mia: An Album of Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, open through October 23, 2010–January 2, 2011.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) is one of the best-known photographers of the Victorian era. From the time she received her first camera as a gift when she was 48 years old, she worked to develop the medium and her personal artistic vision. She is now considered one of photography’s earliest masters.
The Mia album features more than 70 photographs that Cameron compiled collaboratively with her sister Maria “Mia” Jackson. Typical of a family album, the Mia album contains images of family, friends, and neighbors. However, the portraits are posed and photographed in Cameron’s distinctive style, which melds the real with the ideal and the ordinary with the allegorical.
The Mia album provides insight into Cameron’s development as an artist as well as the role of photographs and albums in creating a personal mythology. While the majority of the photographs in the album are by Cameron, including portraits of luminaries like her Isle of Wight neighbor Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, the album also includes a number of photographs attributed to others, most significantly among them pioneering photographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander (1813-1875).
This exhibition was organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions.
Image: Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815–1879), Julia Jackson, ca. 1856–1866. Albumen print from wet plate collodion negative. 9 1/2 x 7 3/8 inches. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, courtesy art2art Circulating Exhibitions.
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