JULIA MARGARET CAMERON (née Pattle) lived from 1815 to 1879. She was a pioneer in artistic photography. She used photography not to produce exact likenesses of her subjects, but to create works of art that captured the essence of the people who posed for her, and by doing so, to create images that she hoped would move those who saw them. She wanted to produce images which, like those of painters, created an impression of the personalities of her sitters. To do this, she employed techniques that were way ahead of other photographers working at the same time.

Julia was born in Kolkata (Calcutta), daughter of a senior British colonial administrator. She married Charles Hay Cameron in 1838. After he retired, he brought Julia and her children to England. They lived in various places before moving to the Isle of Wight in 1860 (next door to the home of her friend the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson), where in about 1863, she was given her first camera. From then onwards, she produced many photographs. Most of which are still recognised as masterpieces today.

Recent research has revealed that Julia and her family lived at 10 Chesham Place (near Belgrave Square) between 1848 and 1850. To commemorate this, English Heritage has placed a commemorative plaque on the house. Today, 12 May 2026, we attended the official unveiling of the plaque. After several interesting speeches had been given, Julia Cameron, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Julia Margaret Cameron pulled a cord which opened the red curtains covering the new memorial, and the plaque was revealed. After the unveiling, a photographer created collodion plate photographs using the type of camera that Julia Margaret Cameron would have used during the 1860s an after.

We had been invited to attend the unveiling ceremony because the organisers were aware that I had written a book about the interesting life of the photographer. Called “Between Two Islands: Julia Margaret Cameron and her Circle”, it is available from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/BETWEEN-TWO-ISLANDS-MARGARET-CAMERON/dp/B0BZFCVLX9). The two islands in the title refer to the Isle of Wight and Sri Lanka, where the Camerons had coffee plantations and where the photographer spent the last years of her life. My book is partly biographical. It is also a travelogue because (unwittingly) travels we have made over the years cover much of the same territory through which Julia Margaret Cameron travelled and lived at various periods in her life.