As Programme Director of the MA in Photography (Historical and Contemporary) Juliet teaches a course unit on nineteenth-century photography which embraces artistic, commercial and instrumental (e.g. police records) practices. She also leads ‘The Photographic Body’, a course unit designed to explore the emergence of a validating network for photography (journals, clubs, museums, galleries, dealers, the market). Juliet is one of three faculty members who teach the course unit on Research Methodology (MAP); she also leads the majority of visits to archives, collections and museums.

Research Interests

Juliet’s particular emphasis as regards research is the nineteenth century, particularly British photography in the late 1850s and 1860s. This was a very rich period in photographic history, encompassing the practices of Charles Ludwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), Clementina, Lady Hawarden, Oscar Rejlander, Henry Peach Robinson, David Wilkie Wynfield and Julia Margaret Cameron. It was also the period which saw photography evolve into a mass market commodity in the shape of the carte-de-visite (miniature portrait photograph). The interplay between so-called ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ practices is an abiding research interest: to this end she has made a special study of the studio portraiture of Camille Silvy.

Biography

Juliet studied for her BA, MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and was awarded British Academy studentships for her postgraduate studies. She wrote her MA dissertation on David Wilkie Wynfield and her PhD was entitled ‘Photography Personified: Art and Identity in British Photography 1857-1869’. Before and after completing her doctoral thesis she worked as a Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Derby and Reading and at the Courtauld Institute. Juliet then took a year-long research post at the National Portrait Gallery where she was offered the opportunity to curate the exhibition and write the book Princes of Victorian Bohemia: Photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield. In 2000 she joined Sotheby’s in Bond Street as a cataloguer in the Photographs department and was made Head of Department in 2003. Juliet joined Sotheby's Institute of Art in summer 2006.

Publications

Conference Papers

‘To Degrade it & Secure for it the Character & Uses of Base Art: Cameron’s True Ambition for Photography’, Julia Margaret Cameron Conference, National Media Museum, July 2003