STAND THERE! SHE SHOUTED

This handsomely designed and illustrated biography introduces readers to the groundbreaking Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

The plain and short Julia Margaret was the odd one out in a family whose girls were known as “the beautiful Miss Pattles.” Rubin engagingly chronicles Cameron’s life from her privileged childhood in the cities of Calcutta and Versailles to her role in bohemian salons in England, whose luminaries, such as Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, would later pose for her portraits. A ruthlessly meticulous, obsessive perfectionist, the commanding and eccentric photographer persuaded children and friends to dress up and hold still for the long sittings needed to stage scenes based on literature and myth. Rubin, author of many books about visual artists, clearly and concisely explains Cameron’s aesthetic sensibilities. In addition to the more than a dozen period photographs, including several by Cameron, are elegant illustrations by Ibatoulline emulating the pre-Raphaelite style of the time.

An informative, engrossing biography about a clever, determined woman who, at the beginnings of photography, made the art form uniquely her own.