Julia Cameron
Award-winning, Norfolk based Photographer
Portraiture from Old Photographs and Albums
Julia Cameron's elegiac and striking photographs break with many long-standing conventions of her discipline. Images are frequently shot towards the sun, in fog or murky light and feature bleak landscapes shunned by most conventional photographers.
The results forge a new way of seeing through the lens creating beautiful artistic compositions using the medium of photography. Evocative and often almost abstract, Julia's work captures the Norfolk landscape with a fresh perspective.
In 2016 Julia was awarded the Naked Wines Prize at Norfolk Contemporary Art Society's biennial exhibition for
"an outstanding work of art" for her landscape photography
In 2021 an artwork based on family letters
was shortlisted for the Sir John Hurt Prize
at the Holt Festival
Julia has been undertaking a long-term project very close to her heart. The study, "Kinswomen: Camerons and Kings served with baked starlings", is new work made from portraits of women and girls who are her grandmothers and great grandmothers, from her family photograph albums and some other historical family items.
It began when she found a box of old photographs, letters and newspaper cuttings while clearing her father's house. Here was a collection of pictures and documents relating to four generations of her family. They were mainly of the women and largely studio portraits. Why there was a disproportionate number of female subjects can only be speculated upon.
From this material she has developed a body of new, innovative and large-scale photographs. Some of the techniques are unique to Julia's practice including the freezing of photographs to produce interesting diversions from the originals.
A recent development has been the creation of large-scale textile installations as a means of display. Printed on voile, a transparent fabric, the images have a ghostly and ethereal quality.
Kinswomen was shown as a solo show at St Margaret's Church of Art in Norwich from 26th August to 4th September 2020. Recently, more photographs of family have become available and these were developed into another Solo exhibition, "Ghosts & Whispers", in 2023.
