ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author demonstrates the years 1867 and 1868, Julia Margaret Cameron embarked upon photographic projects that consciously set out to create discursive spaces of otherness, including spaces of intolerance, infiltration, and colonialism. For Cameron, ambivalence characterizes the choice of subjects, the selection of images, and the context and timing of her solo exhibition in January-February 1868 at the German Gallery on Bond Street, London. In her German Gallery exhibition, Cameron displayed the portraits of her heroes: William Herschel and Thomas Carlyle, John Eyre and Anthony Trollope. Cameron contributed to the public discourse surrounding these significant events by creating and displaying photographs that referred directly to the colonial incidents. By analysing Cameron’s double articulations the author hopes to interrogate ‘the discursive and disciplinary place from which questions of identity are strategically and institutionally posed’ in Cameron’s work. The Camerons’ Freshwater years were marked by constant correspondence with their sons in Ceylon and regular communication with their land overseers.
