Described by Roland Barthes as one of the great “originators” of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron was a creature like no other. She picked up her first camera in 1863, when she was 48. A gift from her daughter, the camera was delivered with a note that now reads like an award-winning example of British understatement: “It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.” In that seaside village, on England’s Isle of Wight, she made almost 1,000 images that to this day look like no one else’s. “Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron” opens at the Jeu de Paume on October 10, the first Paris exhibition of the artist since 1985. It will be fascinating to see how this new interest in Cameron expresses itself in the creative Zeitgeist of the fashion capital. —Sarah Hyde