Letters from Life: Julia Margaret Cameron
This project investigates the intersection of historical narrative, voice performance, and projected archival photography to reanimate the life and ideological complexities of 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Drawing from original letters, diaries, and visual archives, the project synthesizes performance and visual storytelling into an immersive historical experience. The work was staged as a live reading with 11 voice actors, accompanied by media projections that layered Cameron’s photographs with contemporaneous texts and music.
There are 88 slides and the presentation is an hour long.
Kathleen narrates the story and the slides here have image + text but not Kathleen’s narrative text.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ALISTAIR BURTENSHAW, Director and CEO, Watts Gallery
G. F. Watts
BRIAN HINTON MBE, Chair of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust
Dr. James Loos
COLIN FORD CBE, Founding Director, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, & Birthday Boy
Charles Hay Cameron and Sir Alfred Tennyson
CHARITY WAKEFIELD, Actor, Producer, and Director
Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Virginia Woolf, & Miss Fenwick
DAVID NEWMAN, Actor
Sir Henry Taylor, William Allingham, Sir John Herschel, an editor from The Photographic News, Hardinge Hay Cameron, Charlie Hay Cameron, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron
LAURA HART, Screenwriter and Photographer
Laura Troubridge, Emily Tennyson, and Juley Hay Norman
LYNNE TRUSS, Author of Tennyson’s Circle, Tennyson’s Gift
Julia Margaret Cameron
MARK RICHARDS, Former Chair, Lewis Carroll Society
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson / also known as Lewis Carroll
MARTIN BEISLY, Pre-Raphaelite expert & dealer
Holman Hunt
MICHAEL PRITCHARD, Photographic Editor & Historian
Editor from the British Journal of Photography
SUE GRAYSON FORD MBE, Founding Director of The Serpentine Gallery and The Big Draw
Lady Margaret Herschel and Marianne North
TOM FORD, Barrister & son of Colin Ford and Sue Grayson Ford
Mr. R. W. Thomas, an editor from The Photographic Journal
