3-044-454 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Girl, Ceylon, 1875-1879. In this picture the camera is positioned low and close to the sitter. While intimate in scale, the composition is organized so as to emphasize the ethnicity of the child, whose bare and hardened feet are prominently lighted. The interior setting perhaps suggests that the girl was a domestic servant in the Cameron home. Pioneering British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is considered to be one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She took up photography at the age of 48, after her daughter gave her a camera as a present.