Original and out of its time, the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, made in barely a decade between 1864 and 1875, is one of the finest illustrations of the epic breath of the medium's beginnings.

Celebrated in her day for close-up portraits, at once admired and criticised for her taste for a slightly soft focus, she saw in each of her images the embodiment of a prayer. The volume presents more than a hundred of her plates, from her first experiments to her allegorical compositions and those drawn from literature and history.