-The kiss of Peace 1869 by Julia Margaret Cameron.
In
this image, there are two girls, one looks older, and one younger. The two
girls are embracing. One, laying her lips along the forehead of the other. It
looks much posed; both girls appear to have blank expressions, gazing towards
nothing in traditional Cameron fashion. When looking closer in detail, it
appears the older girl is not actually offering a kiss at all, contradicting
the sentimental title to the image, but is more conveying the melancholy of the
image, than peaceful optimism. Together but alone, the figures gaze, in
Cameron’s style, one looking up, and the other down, poetically conveying the
deep meditation on the plights and hardships of Victorian Women.
Cameron’s visual approach to Pictorialism, is her use of soft focus, often creating an image that appears out of focus and almost dreamlike. This increases the effect she uses when the subject/subjects are re- enacting a scene from a play, or a line from a poem. Cameron often mimicked the soft paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement. The women in Cameron’s images often appear expressionless, sad or blank eyes, but making the image appear more beautiful by softening the background and bringing the women into focus. She photographed women in an intimate, personal way, emphasizing the ideals as a woman’s role, as mother and wife. Cameron was often compared to the Impressionist painters, mimicking famous paintings of this time, but was often criticized for her out of focus, soft images, because the people were more interested in not so much the art of a Photograph, but the accuracy.
Around the time this image was taken,
Pictorialism was beginning to form and take its shape within the Photography
world. Images were being created using
soft toning and Sepia tinted photographs. Different textured papers were being used, drawing onto the surface of an image, filters and lens coatings and dodging and burning images. Cameron’s visual approach to Pictorialism, is her use of soft focus, often creating an image that appears out of focus and almost dreamlike. This increases the effect she uses when the subject/subjects are re- enacting a scene from a play, or a line from a poem. Cameron often mimicked the soft paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement. The women in Cameron’s images often appear expressionless, sad or blank eyes, but making the image appear more beautiful by softening the background and bringing the women into focus. She photographed women in an intimate, personal way, emphasizing the ideals as a woman’s role, as mother and wife. Cameron was often compared to the Impressionist painters, mimicking famous paintings of this time, but was often criticized for her out of focus, soft images, because the people were more interested in not so much the art of a Photograph, but the accuracy.
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