So, I recently discovered Julia Margaret Cameron, and she really ticks a lot of my boxes. She was a photographer in England during the Victorian Era (which I adore) and her pictures look like photoshoots directed by museum curators & poets. Plus, the clothes are incredible, the technique is progressive, and you kinda get the feeling that every person that posed for her had, at one point in their life, held a lengthy conversation with a dead ancestor.
Her photography mission statement, per The J. Paul Getty Museum:
My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty.
Also, you should check out the site linked above for really cool background information on some of her photographs and subjects. For example, a series of her photographs were done at the suggestion of Lord Alfred Tennyson to illustrate his epic poem Idylls of the King. She also did a number of photographs portraying Beatrice Cenci, due to her obsession with the true story.
*All the photographs below are from the Victoria and Albert Museum, where you will find many more.
The five foolish Virgins 1864
Group (Unknown man, Mary Kellaway) 1864
Untitled (Unknown Woman) 1864
Ellen Terry at Age Sixteen 1864
Maud 1865
Yes or No? 1865
Sappho 1865
After the manner of the Elgin Marbles 1867
May Prinsep 1870
Gretchen at the Altar 1870-1874
The Parting of Sir Lanceleot and Queen Guinevere 1874
Elaine ‘the Lily maid of Astolat’ 1874
Mariana 1874-1875
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid 1875
