PHOTOGRAPHY AND FEMINIST ISSUES: JULIA MARGARET CAMERON’S POLITICS OF GENDER

Starting from a methodological perspective indebted to the ideas established in feminist and gender studies, this essay aims to enhance the role and presence of photography in women’s practices as an affirmation of their autonomy and as a tool for identity and performance. And while this is a well-established assumption regarding the work of women artists involved in militant feminism, the same cannot be said for women who have sensed its potential to transgress codes and norms, even outside the territory of feminism proper. In this sense, the events surrounding the origins of photography are particularly interesting: the essay analyses the figure of the Victorian woman photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who, while among the very few women to have been historicised, offers new insights and meaning from a feminist reading