Alethea (Alice Liddell)

The gift of a camera from her daughter and son-in-law in 1864, when she was forty-eight, set Julia Margaret Cameron on the path to a deep and fulfilling exploration of photography. During the next decade, Cameron photographed a wide range of people around her home at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. Her body of work, which includes both portraiture and narrative tableaux vivants, stands as one of the great achievements in the history of photography.

Alice Liddell (1852-1934), Cameron's subject in this photograph, was made famous by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who in 1865 immortalized her inAlice in Wonderland. Cameron's portrait, titled Alethea-from the ancient Greek word meaning "honesty" or "sincerity"-is a bust-length profile in an oval format. Alice's luxuriant hair sweeps back and then flows over her right shoulder, merging with the rich background, recalling contemporary explorations by Pre-Raphaelite painters.

Cameron was criticized by many-and equally admired by others-for her soft focus and seemingly careless printing techniques. Nevertheless, the painterly quality of Cameron's photographs is an intentional component of her photographic vocabulary, suggesting the handmade qualities of a negative, with scratches or dust spots purposefully unretouched for effect. These imperfections also poignantly express a sense of motion or the momentary.

Cameron's photographs were rediscovered and popularized in the twentieth century by Alfred Stieglitz, who admired them for their pictorialist, handmade appearance.