The perfect Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition, according to Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1970 and 2004, would have to be vast.
In order to do justice to the pioneering and prolific photographer, her portraits would have to be put into groupings that illustrated her passionate enthusiasm for religious iconology, female beauty, family, and men of scholarly and artistic achievement. The exhibition should contextualize her images by taking place in a venue that evoked the period in which Cameron lived, and also by showing the work of her contemporaries. There should be a section on her legacy and influence, including Sally Mann's intimate but also theatrical family portraits from the 1980s and '90s.
Perhaps most importantly, the exhibition would have to make it clear that the splotches, scratches and seeming lack of concern with sharp focus were part of Cameron's quest to portray poetic truth, above and beyond the camera's photographic fidelity.