Hannah Maynard

• Illustration — Gems of British Columbia. 1883 Maynard's portrait work encompassed several different formats following the fashions of the day, cartes-de-visite in the 1860s, cabinet cards in the following decade, as well as larger-sized prints. These small photographic calling cards were widely exchanged and helped build her reputation among a broad clientele. The Maynard studio is known to have produced forty-three cartes-de-visite of Indigenous people, often Victoria street vendors. Maynard was a master of lighting technique, and she was one of the early adopters of line-lit photography to highlight facial features. Her backgrounds were often highly ornamental, using painted backgrounds and elaborate domestic interiors and props. Starting about 1880, Maynard began to experiment with photomontage in her Gems of British Columbia series which she created each year between 1881 and 1895. She identified professionally as a "photographic artist," emphasizing both technical skill and creative intent in her practice. Conceived as an annual greeting card to be sent out on New Years to all the mothers of children she had photographed in the preceding year, it was very popular. The series also functioned as a distinctive form of self-promotion, demonstrating her technical abilities while strengthening relationships with clients. She cut out the outline of the photograph of each baby or child, and then mounted the images on a pane of window glass and re-photographed the whole. She began to incorporate the montages of previous years in symbolist patterns, resulting in compositions that included up to 22,000 individual photographs. Her Gems of 1885 was published and praised by the St. Louis and Canadian Photographer in 1886, bringing Maynard a measure of recognition throughout North America. Beginning in 1883 Maynard was struck by personal tragedy, with the death of her 16-year-old daughter Lillian of typhoid fever, followed in later years by another daughter Emma and daughter-in-law Adelaide, and some of her photographs began to take on the aspect of a memorial to the departed. It was also in this period that she took an interest in seances and Spiritualism. She began in the 1880s to create a type of photograph described by her as "Living Statuary" or "Statuary from Life", the sitter often appearing as a bust on a pedestal. Her experimentation developed further into the realm of multiple exposure, and some photographs show as many as four or five likenesses of Maynard, often engaged in different tasks, or in one notable image, holding a single garland of flowers. She also often included members of her close family in these photographs, such as in Hannah Maynard and her grandson, Maynard McDonald, in a tableau vivant composite photo, c.1893. A selection of her double and multiple exposure photographs were published in the St. Louis and Canadian Photographer in 1894. Another difficult technique that Maynard pursued was that of bas-relief, which involved the embossing of a photograph. Around 1897, Maynard discontinued her investigations of trick photography.

Between 1897 and 1902, while continuing her studio portraiture, Maynard was the official photographer of the Victoria Police Department, producing mug shots as required as well as portraits of officers. She also photographed for the government in other capacities and worked as an ethnographic photographer. In 1907 her husband Richard died, and in 1912 she retired, selling her photographic equipment to a local Chinese photographer. She summarized her achievement by stating that "I think I can say with confidence that we photographed everyone in the town at one time or another." Throughout her career, the studio remained both a commercial enterprise and a space for sustained artistic experimentation. Maynard died in 1918 in Victoria at the age of 84. She is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery. A play by Janet Munsil based on the life of Maynard, Be Still, premiered at Richmond's Gateway Theatre on March 1, 2001 and opened at Victoria's Belfry Theatre on March 14 of the same year. Elizabeth Lazebnik subsequently adapted the play into the film Be Still, in which Maynard was portrayed by Piercey Dalton. Lazebnik also previously made a short film about Maynard, The Multiple Selves of Hannah Maynard, in 2005. The British Columbia Archives holds the Maynard Family Collection, which includes hundreds of portraits by Hannah, Maynard's trick photography, the BC Gems series, and the Mrs. R. Maynard Photographic Studio ledgers. In 2015, her work was included in The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Artists, an exhibition co-curated by Alicia Boutilier and Tobi Bruce who also co-edited the book/catalogue.