John Browning Cameron ’53

John grew up in Chattanooga, where he attended McCallie School. He entered the undergraduate history program at Princeton in 1949. After graduation in 1953 he studied in Europe and earned both a License-és-Lettres (1959) and a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures (1960) from the University of Paris.

John next entered the graduate art history program at Yale, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in art history. His research on Romanesque architecture and architectural sculpture was published in the Bulletin Monumental, Gesta, and the Grove Dictionary of Art.  

In the last 20 years, he turned his research interests to 19th-century French photography, and he was recognized for his scholarship on the French photographic firm of Claude-Marie Ferrier and Charles Soulier, whose glass and paper stereographs he avidly collected.  

John was a professor of art history at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., for 43 years. His zest for life, his giddy defiance of conformity, and his subversive sense of humor combined to make him a favorite of students. He was still teaching a full schedule of classes at the time of his passing, having shown little interest in retirement.  

John is survived by his wife, Janice Schimmelman, and his cousins, Robert and Daniel Crates.