By the book: B.C. museum honours Victoria’s first female photo entrepreneur
Published 11:30 am Monday, September 28, 2026
A book celebrating Victoria’s first female photo entrepreneur and one of Canada’s earliest professional photographers launches – most appropriately – at the provincial museum this fall.
Hannah Maynard: Life & Work by Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere captures the artist’s life from 1834 to 1918 as the first woman in B.C. to establish a professional photography studio at a time when few people worked professionally with cameras.
“Hannah Maynard’s photographic practice was all-consuming and seeped into almost every facet of her life: her professional livelihood; leisurely bike rides; cottage excursions with her family; her relationships with her husband, children, and grandchildren; and her sensibilities about life and death,” the author said in a news release. “It is unique to have such a full visual record of one’s life and community as we have with Hannah Maynard in the collection of the Royal BC Museum.”
Maynard arrived in Victoria in 1862 and within a year opened her studio, just two decades after the invention of photography. She operated that studio for the next 50 years. It was originally located on Johnston Street, and then moved to Douglas Street, and a final move in 1892 to 49 ½ Pandora Street, which is now John’s Place Restaurant. At each location, Maynard’s studio drew clients ranging from babies to convicts, sailors to dignitaries, and servants to industrialists.
Cavaliere traces how Maynard, an entrepreneur, innovator, and mother of four who promoted herself as a “photographic artist,” combined bold industriousness with an inventive approach to portraiture. Her work ranged from uncanny multiple exposure images and imaginative tableaux vivants to documentary work as an ethnographic and police photographer. When she retired in 1912, Maynard reflected on her life in Victoria: “I think I can say with confidence that we photographed everybody in the town at one time or another.”
The launch, Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. at the Royal BC Museum, includes Cavaliere in conversation with Sara Angel, founder and executive director of the Art Canada Institute.
Register for the free event at rbcm.ca/event/hannah-maynard-event.
About the Author: Christine van Reeuwyk
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