While the Roman goddess Pomona does find herself in more than her fair share of artwork, it was only Julia Margaret Cameron who cast Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, as Pomona in a photograph. 

In 1872, when this photo was taken, Lewis Carroll was just one of a number of famous Victorian men passing through Julia Margaret Cameron's circle. The list included Tennyson, Henry Taylor, Charles Darwin, and John Herschel, all of whom she also did portraits of. Because Lewis Carroll was in Cameron’s circle, and because the Liddell family had a home on the Isle of Wight (an island off the coast of England), Cameron was able to get the now twenty-year-old Alice Liddell, the girl to whom Lewis Carroll attributes his inspiration for Alice In Wonderland, to pose for this photo as the Roman goddess Pomona. 

In this shot, Liddell is set up in the same studio as most of Cameron’s subjects, the famous and idyllic chicken coop converted studio in her backyard. Aside from this photo, Liddell posed multiple times for Cameron as Alethea, Ceres, and St. Agnes. 

Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit, trees, gardens, and fertility is also often associated with the biblical Eve. It’s tough to say whether the defiant, hand on hip pose is something set up by Cameron herself or whether it’s just the way Liddell posed. On the one hand, Cameron is known for empowering women through her photos by flipping the stories of myths, as she did in The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty. On the other hand, Liddell was known at the time as a person with an extremely strong personality. This is what led Lewis Carroll to spend time with Liddell, photograph her, and draw inspiration for his novel. In reference to her photographability, it’s been said that Liddell “had a forceful presence that transcended the role she played for the camera.” Speculation is that in mythologies, Pomona is typically known for spurning the gods’ advances, and with Pomona as the photo’s title, it seems likely that Cameron was deliberately asking Lidell to play out that character for her.