At a time when women were seen as housewives, wives, mothers, etc., the late 1850s presented a change of pace for one woman in particular. Photography was discovered in 1826 and soon after, the photographic phenomenon was experimented with and in turn brought new and different ways of taking photos, not only to document real time but also to conceptualize a scene in which an image would be taken. Julia Margaret Cameron will forever be remembered in the history books as one of the first female photographers to make significant contributions to a field dominated by the male counterpart of her era. Julia Margaret Cameron was born in 1815 in Calcutta, India and was the fourth child of James and Adeline de l'Etang Pattle. She was one of the famous seven Pattle sisters, renowned in Anglo-Indian society for their intelligence and beauty (Cox 5). She married Charles Cameron, a British civil servant, and had six children. When Cameron met her future husband in 1835, he was writing his “Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful,” a thoughtful text that explored many of the fundamental concepts of his art (Cox14). While living in Calcutta, her family belonged to high society and continued in the same role after moving and settling in England in 1848. She met and entertained her friends like Tennyson, Herschel, Carlyle, Darwin, Browning and Longfellow and was able to photograph them due to her proximity to them, thus being one of the reasons she was recorded in history. These are often the only photographs found of these historical figures. She took up photography in middle age: a portrait entitled Annie, My First Success is dated 1864 (Newhall 78). After about a month of experimenting...... middle of paper...... anchoring his name in the history books. Julia Margaret Cameron will always be considered a pioneer of her time and one of the first female photographers to make significant contributions to the photographic community. Works Cited Arnason, HH and Elizabeth C. Mansfield. History of modern art: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print. Cox, Julian and Julia Margaret. Cameron. Focus: Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Santa Monica CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996. Print.Newhall, Beaumont. The history of photography: from 1839 to the present. New York Graphic Soc, 1982. Print. Wolf, Sylvia, Julia Margaret Cameron, Stephanie Lipscomb, Debra N. Mancoff, and Phyllis Rose. The Women of Julia Margaret Cameron. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998. Print