NOW ON VIEW: “Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In”
![L to R: Installation view, “Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In” at National Portrait Gallery, London, 2024 / Julia Margaret Cameron. "Teachings from the Elgin Marbles," 1867, 284 x 233 mm. Albumen print. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. / Francesca Woodman. “Untitled,” from the “Caryatid” series, 1980, 79 1/2 x 36 1/4 in. (201.93 x 92.075 cm). Diazotype. / Julia Margaret Cameron. “2d. version study after the Elgin Marbles,” 1867, 582 x 465 mm. Albumen print. Victoria and Albert Museum. / Francesca Woodman. “Untitled,” from the “Caryatid” series, 1980, 71 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (180.975 x 92.075 cm). Diazotype. / Julia Margaret Cameron. “Isabel Bateman,” 1874, 331 x 252 mm. Albumen print. Wilson Centre for Photography. / Installation view, “Portraits to Dream In” / Julia Margaret Cameron. “[A Sibyl]”, 1870, 350 x 273 mm. Albumen print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. / Francesca Woodman. “Untitled,” 1980, 19 x 17 1/8 in. (48.26 x 43.498 cm). Diazotype. All Francesca Woodman artworks © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5d8073c5ddf5281c25cdcc3e/663be24604dcd52f17a793d9_IMG_3721.png)
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National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place, London
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In pairs the work of two of the most influential women in the history of photography, revealing a shared space in each artists’ approach to portraiture which curator Magdalene Keaney describes as “the Dream Space."
This exhibition of more than 160 lifetime prints presents Woodman’s and Cameron’s work in a series of extended thematic dialogues. One such conversation centers on “Caryatids and the Classical Form,” a recurring inspiration for both artists. Woodman’s totemic caryatids—singular figures like those that support the pediment and entablature of her monumental diazotype collage Blueprint for a Temple (II) recently on view across the Atlantic at in New York—are shown alongside Cameron’s sculpturally draped figures, arranged to evoke classical poses. Each studied the caryatids of the Acropolis in Athens, Woodman through multiple childhood trips to Greece and Cameron through the Parthenon Marbles (known in Cameron’s days as the Elgin Marbles) at the British Museum. Particularly when viewed together, these works articulate each artists’ exploration of idealized female forms, a tension between the eternal and the ephemeral, and the allegorical possibilities of photographic images.
Click on the image above for a complete gallery view and details.