Legendary New York based poet, singer and artist Patti Smith has opened her first photographic exhibition on the Isle of Wight at Dimbola .  Patti chose the date for the exhibition as it co-incided with the late great Julia Margaret Cameron’s birthday whose work has been influential in Patti’s own photography.

‘An Exhibition By Patti Smith’ opened  ahead of her acclaimed solo show of poetry and music at the Farringford Hotel in Freshwater the former home of  Alfred Lord Tennyson. 

Patti says of  her exhibition: “I am not a photographer, yet taking these pictures has given me a sense of unity and personal satisfaction.  They contain all that I understand about light and composition, and are a visual record of my travels and objects that may have little material value, but that I cherish, nonetheless”.

Patti personally selected the twenty silver gelatin prints from her collection bringing  a poet’s instinct along with a musician’s sense of harmony to the art.  Many of the images date from her residency at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex and intimately if not literally connect with Julia Margaret Cameron as images of objects associated with Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell to name but a few.

As Patti writes in Land 250, the book length collection of her photographs published last year: ” In the farmhouse that belonged to painter Vanessa Bell is the mirror that belonged to her mother, and is so old that the surface is pitted.  It is said that Virginia Woolf watched her mother die in this mirror.  Virginia, as she was only thirteen, could not bear to watch her mother die so she watched the reflection instead.” 

Dr Brian Hinton MBE, Chairman of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust:

“These very personal images are like a ghost biography of Patti herself: her children, her mentors, her own wedding dress.  It is particularly appropriate that these images be shown in the former home and workplace of Julia Margaret Cameron.

Both women revoloutionised their chosen art form, by bringing a shamanic intensity to the everyday.  Both transmute domesticity into myth.  The  Julia Margaret Cameron Trust hopes this will be the start of a long and fruitful relationship with a modern icon.”

Patti says: ‘I like to take pictures of objects that have special meaning for me.‘

 As is evident for within the images displayed include her Fathers Cup, Robert Mablethorpes Slippers, the Grave of Shelly, John Keat’s Bed and Herman Hesse’s Typewriter.

Allowing Patti the final words of which we would assume Julia Margaret Cameron would agree on the sentiment:

“I like to sit in the small space where I work, listening to Marian Anderson singing spirituals and watching the light change in the room.  When the light is right, I get up and load my camera.”