Impreciseness in Julia Margaret Cameron's Portrait Photographs

摘要

Julia Margaret Cameron developed her approach to focus in her portraits of the 1860s, when photographic rules and terminology had just begun to be established. Cameron's notion of focus has been discussed largely from the perspective of whether her photographic style was deliberate. This article approaches her work by denying this dichotomy. It argues that Cameron's treatment of focus implies a critique of the photographic image, for it undermines one of the major photographic goals at this time: the rendering of a precise, sharp, accurate record. The truth of Cameron's images lies not in their precision but in the allusion they make to the sitters' characters by blurring their physical form. Impreciseness - the quality of being inexact, ambiguous, nebulous, even out-of-focus - encourages viewers to interact with the images while also revealing the photographic process.