Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In
By Magdalene Keaney. Contributions by Helen Ennis, Katarina Jerinic.
Enticing, ethereal photographs from two visionaries who used portraiture as an exploration of the “dream space”
Living and working over a century apart, British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and American photographer Francesca Woodman experienced vastly different ways of making and understanding images. Yet the two share more similarities than expected. Both artists had brief careers lasting less than 15 years; while neither enjoyed popularity and success during their lives, they have posthumously received widespread acclaim. Their portraits feature ethereal, experimental qualities that connect them soundly across time. The beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, includes Woodman’s and Cameron’s best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The book begins with three feature essays that consider Cameron and Woodman simultaneously and moves on to 10 thematic sections interspersing works by the two artists. Portraits to Dream In makes new connections between the work of two innovative photographers who pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired images. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) took up photography in the 1860s and was soon elected to both the Photographic Society of London and the Photographic Society of Scotland. She photographed her friends and family as well as notable figures of Victorian England, including Charles Darwin, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Francesca Woodman (1958–81) worked in both the United States and Italy and made her first mature photograph at the age of 13. Her lifetime exhibitions include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1976); Galleria Ugo Ferrante, Rome (1978); and the Alternative Museum, New York (1980). Her artist’s book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published by Synapse Press in 1981.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Guardian
Sean O'Hagan
The intriguing pairing of two disparate female pioneers is a quietly subversive way of exploring their work anew, from a perspective that elevates and contrasts their imaginative strategies rather than their respective life stories.
4Columns
Emily LaBarge
Like Woodman, Cameron’s photographic claim was never to verisimilitude. Like Cameron, Woodman wanted to show something that could only be seen in photographs. Dreams as real as unreal.
Hyperallergic
Natalie Haddad
The pairing is most enlightening in the way it illuminates how gender and sexuality play out through the artists’ drastically different versions of femininity.
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Featured photographs are from Portraits to Dream In, the National Portrait Gallery’s stunning exhibition catalog pairing the work of the enigmatic American photographer Francesca Woodman—who died of suicide in 1981, at the age of just twenty-two—and Julia Margaret Cameron—the Victorian portraitist, overlooked in her lifetime, who died just over a century before. Though many differences in their work exist, there are also remarkable correspondences, including a strangely gripping, shared dream space. “The title of this book comes from an observation made by Woodman that photography could be a place ‘for the viewer to dream in,’ that her photographs do not ‘record reality [but] offer images as an alternative to everyday life,’” former NPG photography curator Magdalene Keaney writes. “This sentence describes not only the intention to depict an experience of a vision, fantasy or the subconscious, but is also an invitation for the viewers themselves to dream.”
CLOCKWISE ABOVE: Julia Margaret Cameron, “Sadness” (1864); Francesca Woodman, “Polka Dots #5” (1976); Julia Margaret Cameron, “I Wait (Rachel Gurney)” (1872); Francesca Woodman, “Untitled” (1977) from the Angels series.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 224 pgs / 161 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $63 ISBN: 9781855145535 PUBLISHER: National Portrait Gallery AVAILABLE: 5/14/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In
Published by National Portrait Gallery. By Magdalene Keaney. Contributions by Helen Ennis, Katarina Jerinic.
Enticing, ethereal photographs from two visionaries who used portraiture as an exploration of the “dream space”
Living and working over a century apart, British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and American photographer Francesca Woodman experienced vastly different ways of making and understanding images. Yet the two share more similarities than expected. Both artists had brief careers lasting less than 15 years; while neither enjoyed popularity and success during their lives, they have posthumously received widespread acclaim. Their portraits feature ethereal, experimental qualities that connect them soundly across time.
The beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, includes Woodman’s and Cameron’s best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The book begins with three feature essays that consider Cameron and Woodman simultaneously and moves on to 10 thematic sections interspersing works by the two artists. Portraits to Dream In makes new connections between the work of two innovative photographers who pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired images.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) took up photography in the 1860s and was soon elected to both the Photographic Society of London and the Photographic Society of Scotland. She photographed her friends and family as well as notable figures of Victorian England, including Charles Darwin, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) worked in both the United States and Italy and made her first mature photograph at the age of 13. Her lifetime exhibitions include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1976); Galleria Ugo Ferrante, Rome (1978); and the Alternative Museum, New York (1980). Her artist’s book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published by Synapse Press in 1981.
