Roadtrip: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Milwaukee Art Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron was the first photographer to break out of what was eventually to become the 20th century dogmatic f64 aesthetic of acute sharpness, long tonal range prints, and insistence on realistic documentation which continues today in HDR digital photography. Twenty-five years after photography was invented she took it where she wanted and got dismissed for her unconventional vision and her gender by the photographic intelligensia. She did sell enough of her photographs, which were of the right people, to some of the right people, so a fair bit of her work survives. The Milwaukee Art Museum was showing an exhibit that otherwise has only been in New York, and returns to the Victoria and Albert, the permanent home of most of it.

The museum has been featured in one of my first Roadtrip blogs and once when picking Andy and Kristin up at the airport.

Little Guinness (we had plans to go to a micro-brewery) was loaded with speedy Kodak Ultra-Max 400.

We drove down there in what seemed like practice for the Gran Prix the entire way. Prolific tailgating at 80 mph. Easier to deal with in a Mustang, but still not at all relaxing. We went to lunch at Edison, a posh new restaurant in the Historic Third Ward.

The dining room was very nice, but a little empty and cold. The reviews seem to be based on dinner and the lunch menu was a little underwhelming. A nice enough place to sit and recuperate after the drive.

The entrance from the parking ramp to the Milwaukee Art Museum always seems like you're entering a 
Sci-Fi film.

That impression doesn't change when you get to the soaring Windhover Hall with it's signature winged sunshade.

OK, we get it. The place is held up by arches.

The special exhibitions galleries at the left and the corridor leading to the main galleries in the older Museum building.

The Julia Margaret Cameron Exhibit was in the basement in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts. It was fantastic. Everything done by her hand, although she had some help with some prints. Many of them I had only seen in small format in the back of a raison d'etre volume. Most of them are signed and titled in her handwriting, with copyright often noted. Despite her literary settings, the real personalities of the sitters is what gets you. She was a really good technician with depth of field and recognized the potential of long exposure. Her original Petzval lens was included in the exhibition. I would like to retouch the dust in a few spots though. I don't think they explained very well what it took to do wet-plate and albumen-print photography, except a quote where she apologized that, in her enthusiasm, she got permanent silver nitrate stains on everything,

When we asked for directions in that long corridor, I still had the camera in my hand and was informed that the little tripod was strictly forbidden. While we looked at the first gallery, I set the unmounted camera on the bench in the unoccupied next room. I checked on it quite a few times. At the end of the ten minute exposure, a well meaning guard who was looking for the patron who might have forgotten it, was holding it with the shutter still open. He managed to keep a spotlight in the frame the entire time he carried it. Do I need to share authorship of the photo with him? Anybody understand the dotted nature of the trail?

Several rooms down, I saw the backlit banner of Mary Hillier and her flowing hair at the entrance and tried again. The soft leather benches curve down toward the edge, which you can see in the previous photograph. As I struggled to find a way to tilt up the camera (including wedging the Museum tickets under it), a new guard noticed and asked if he could help me take a selfie. I asked if instead he could just allow me to use my little tripod on the bench I would really appreciate that. The legs didn't even need to be extended, just so the ball and socket head could point the camera up a little. He didn't quite understand but was going to be there for 55 minutes so he said go ahead and it would probably be alright.

Moving on, a favorite from the permanent collection.

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to submit this for the Abstraction theme this month for the Fox Valley Photography Group.

A sparse sculpture gallery, which I think is more commonly a reception area, with a hole in the floor under a Calder mobile.

Sarah photographing sailboats in Lake Michigan through the holes in the sculpture.

The corner of that gallery. I was using the octagonal columns to hold the camera against.

Idris Kahn: Repeat After Me was in the special exhibition galleries. His work consists of repeated images laid down on top of each other in several media. These early prints were done by blending dozens of photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher of a similar shape of buildings on top of each other. If you look at the bottom of the left photograph, you can see my reflection holding the camera against the glass of the gallery entrance. A maintanence crew came by and didn't say anything.

We had latte's on the shoreline to refuel before the drive home. The sunscreen wings over the main lobby are visible.

Looking up at Lake Michigan and the sky reflecting in the curved windows.

The Museum is located right on the trail that lines the shore, behind the breakwater that defines the harbor.

I had taken along my Hazy Rabbit and EyePA 30 Lakefront Brewery cameras to photograph the brewery and tasting room in downtown Milwaukee. 

The map out of the city looked like a bloodshot eye with red zones extending in every direction. After the challenge of the drive to get here, we decided to skip the brewery and spent nearly an extra hour getting back to Oshkosh. Unlike the morning drive, it was mostly just tedious crawling in traffic or down county roads at Google Map's command. Seconds after we passed the Ninth Avenue exit in Oshkosh, traffic on I-41 came to a slow roll for a new lane closure and it took us another 15 minutes to get one exit down to the next opportunity at Oshkosh Avenue. When we arrived at Parm for pizza and beer, I found that my tripod had lost one of it's legs in my pocket. I accidentally bought this pink tripod for Andy a decade ago and replaced it with a black one and took this one home. Not wanting attention for anything when I'm trying to take a photograph, I avoided using it for years. Recently it became the most usable, easily pocketable tripod I had, so damn the associations, I took it for this trip. 

Trying to compensate for the lost leg, I leaned the tripod against my beer glass. Not the best choice while eating very spicy pizza. Sarah kindly gave me a sip from hers.

A later view with just the tripod head and my iphone to get the camera up to see into the pizza. 

A very nice book from the V&A.

Reading it on Sunday morning. I've gotten direct inspiration from her before, once spontaneously and once deliberately.

Later, in my exotic apres le bain trousseau.

Another version. Although I was looking at the clock and listening to Sarah's metal playlist downstairs, it looks like I have very heavy eyelids in both of these.

An attempt to mimic Mary Hillier's hair. Would Cameron recognize what her influence has led to?

Little Guinness has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The Kodak Ultra 400 was the second roll developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C-41 kit.