CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/1/2024

Enter the ethereal, experimental dream space of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron

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.