Colouring the Multiple Lives of Hannah Maynard (1834-1918)
This week, while sifting through digitized photographs at the BC Archives, I came across a half-dozen historical photographs unlike anything seen before the age of selfies and Photoshop.
These manipulated photos were taken by Hannah Maynard – an early expert in experimental photography. As I began colouring her photographs, it became clear that Hannah Maynard was an extraordinary and talented photographer.
This is an 1893 self-portrait of Hannah in her studio that I call “The Mad Tea Party.” When you look at it at a quick glance, it looks like it is three women having a tea party in a nineteenth century Victorian parlour. There’s a woman on the left-hand side pouring the tea, a woman on the right holding a teacup, and there’s a woman in the centre… Wait, the woman in the centre is not actually at the table: she’s in a photo, that is framed above the table, hanging on the wall. But she’s not in the frame, she’s actually leaning out of the frame, and dumping the contents of her teacup on one of the women seated at the table below.
Now that’s pretty surreal, but then you realize that all three women are Hannah Maynard herself. She has taken three images of herself and incorporated them into this image that shows three women at the table. What is really amazing is that this image was created years before surrealism, at a time when photography was only used for portraiture and landscapes. I knew there was a unique story behind this image, and I needed to find more about Hannah’s life.
Born Hannah Hatherly, in Cornwall, England in 1834, she married Richard Maynard, a bootmaker, in 1853, and moved with him to Canada. They settled first in Ontario where they spent a decade raising their children. In the late 1850s, while Richard travelled to B.C. to prospect for gold, Hannah learned how to take photographs. The whole family moved to Victoria in the early 1860s, and while Richard returned to the goldfields, Hannah opened a photography studio on Johnson Street. At the time, Victoria was a small outpost town with thirty-seven brick buildings; a city, Hannah described “of tents, gullies and swamps and the inhabitants mostly miners.”
In the beginning, many people boycotted her studio because she was a woman. Her daughter, Lillie, was her main supporter; her muse and model. When Richard returned to Victoria to establish a boot and shoe business, Hannah taught him photography. He would become a successful photographer in his own right, documenting British Columbian landscapes.
Just as things started to look up for the studio, Lillie passed away from Typhoid fever. During this period, Hannah started leading a double life. In the day she did studio portraiture and also became Victoria’s official police photographer. At night she joined spiritualist societies in an attempt to connect to Lillie. Then destiny brought her another test: her older daughter, Emma, drowned.
Hannah Maynard did not shy away from exploring ideas of life and death in her art and expressed her own struggles with grief in her quirky self-portraits. Her grief seemed to crack open an artistic portal, and she used photography to deal with her devastating loss. What I find so fascinating about her story is the courage, resiliency and sense of humour that comes through in her photographs.
While Hannah’s photos reveal the workings of a unique creative mind, we know very little about her inner thoughts. If I had the ability to time travel, I would transport myself to Victoria, B.C. in the 1890s to meet Hannah Maynard. I fantasize about sitting in her parlour, having a cup of tea, and finding out more about the methods behind some of her creations. I want to know how she seamlessly integrated the double exposure images in her self-portraits. And what was it like being a pioneering photographer and business woman in colonial Victoria?
I’m sure Hannah would have loved to see her creations in colour. This past week, colouring her photos became an obsession as I looked for clues into Hannah’s inner life. Colouring Hannah’s photos revealed a truly remarkable woman who lived multiple lives – she was a loving mother, wife, business-woman, and artist who pushed the boundaries through her experimental photography.
References
Gee, Doreen Marion, “The Genius of Hannah Maynard” (Mar. 2014). The James Bay Beacon.
Hopper, Tristin, “The Most Surreal Pictures in the Victorian World” (Nov. 15, 2019). The Capital.
Hume, Stephen, “Canada 150: Hannah Maynard was early master of new art of photography” (Feb. 3, 2017). Vancouver Sun.
Royal BC Museum, “Hannah Maynard Learning Portal” (2020).
Priegert, Portia, “BACK ROOM: Hannah Maynard (1834-1918)” (May 8, 2013).
Salahub, Jennifer E., “A Textile Narrative Through the Eye of a Camera/Through the Eye of a Needle” (2006). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 327.
Wilks, Claire Weissman, 1933- and Hannah Maynard 1834-1918. The Magic Box: The Eccentric Genius of Hannah Maynard. Toronto: Exile Editions, c1980.
