Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. LONDON — Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In at the National Portrait Gallery is all about affinities.
The show’s premise is that two innovative women photographers whose lives were separated by a century are connected by remarkable parallels. The massive exhibition of more than 160 works is divided into sections (e.g.
, The Dream Space, Angels and Otherworldly Beings, Mythology, Nature and Femininity), and some surface similarities are obvious: Both artists were women, had brief careers, worked primarily in black and white, pushed the limits of their medium, and had a feel for fantasy. Alongside these, curator Magdalene Keaney posits thematic correspondences, attuned to the artists’ apparent femininity, and provides visual evidence of the tenuous connections by pairing formally similar images. Angels, nymphs, goddesses, and women with loose dresses and downcast eyes circulate as the ethereal threads that bind the artists across time and place.
Just seeing this many works by these artists is a gift for fans, and Keaney deserves credit for bringing a major two-woman show into a national museum. Yet what stood out for me was not where these two artists overlapped, but whe.