The dream team

Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman pushed the boundaries of photography, and have been paired up in a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Tracy Calder takes a look

- Tracy Calder

In 1868 a reviewer for The Photographic News (the forerunner to this magazine) described a set of exhibition prints made by Julia Margaret Cameron as ‘altogether repulsive’. It seems laughable now, knowing what we do about Cameron’s influence on the medium, but back then her ‘wilfully imperfect photography’ caused some critics to get seriously fired up. In her defence, photography was very much in its infancy when she was gifted a camera, and she never once claimed to be a master technician. Now, of course, every smudged fingerprint, unsightly scratch or blurry face is evidence of the human touch – something that’s sure to become more valuable in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

The photograph as a physical object has long fascinated artists, academics and historians, so it’s great to see more than 160 vintage prints from Cameron and Francesca Woodman on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Pairing artists who never actually met and who worked more than a century apart is not without its risks (we are constantly being asked to ‘explore the parallel paths of great artists’ or ‘consider the open-ended dialogue’ between individuals). Sometimes, the pairing falls flat: the link between styles is tenuous, the premise for the show is weak, or the notoriety of one artist threatens to overshadow the other, for example.