Minna Keene

She died in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. Keene was an early female member of the Linked Ring, a photographic society created to show that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, and to propel photography further into the fine art world. She was also a member of the London Salon of Photography and the first woman to be admitted as a fellow to the Royal Photographic Society, where she exhibited in annual exhibitions from 1911 to 1929.

• Name — Minna Keene • Born — 5 February 1859 • Birthplace — Rumbeck (Hessisch Oldendorf), Germany • Died — 1943 Oakville, Ontario, Canada • Known for — Photography

Doris Wilhelmine Charlotte Töneböne (from 1862, Bergmann), also known as a photographer by her married name, Minna Keene, was born in Rumbeck, Waldeck (now part of the city of Hessisch-Oldendorf), on 5 February 1859, the illegitimate daughter of Dorothea Charlotte Töneböne (1832–1874). Her mother married Louis Bergmann (1822–1879), a police constable and former musician, in Arolsen, Waldeck, in 1862; she was confirmed as Minna Bergmann in Arolsen on Easter Sunday, 1872. Minna married Caleb Keene (b. 1862) in Chelsea, London, in 1887. Caleb was a "decorator's apprentice" and brother of the landscape painter cum "photographic artist" Elmer Ezra Keene (1853–1929). In South Africa, Minna's portraits of prominent white South Africans appeared on the covers of magazines, and her photos of non-white subjects, such as Our Malay Washerwoman, 1903–1913, were acclaimed and sold as postcards. Minna’s first mention in British photographic literature occurs in the late 1890s, when she is found submitting work (with some success) to competitions in the art journal The Studio and to a selection of regional photographic societies, including the Chelmsford Camera Club and Southsea Exhibition. The subjects of her early work in England included flowers, plants, and birds; her botanical and ornithological work was used in British textbooks into the 1920s. After immigrating to Canada in about 1913, Keene was commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to photograph the Rockies (1914–15) to market the mountain journey to tourists. In 1920, she opened a studio in Toronto, relocating to Oakville in 1922. • Illustration — Pomegranates by Minna Keene (1910). Despite innovating in and enriching photography, female photographers in Keene's time were not taken as seriously as their male counterparts. Keene won numerous prizes and established studios in South Africa and Canada; yet when she was featured in an article in Maclean's magazine in 1926, she was described as "a charming hostess" and a "home lover". Her daughter Violet Keene was also a photographer. The work of the Keenes was rediscovered by the public after being featured in a 1983 exhibition on women photographers, organized by curator Laura Jones, which was shown at venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the London Regional Art Gallery. Their archives are kept at The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University.

• 1910: Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain • 1911: Fifty-sixth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain • 1913: Fifty-eighth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain • 1983: Rediscovery: Canadian Women Photographers 1841–1941, London, Ontario, Canada • 2016: Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age, Tate Britain, London.

• Science and Society Picture Library, Science Museum Group, London • The National Archives, Kew, London