The Royal BC Museum in Victoria hosts the launch of Hannah Maynard: Life & Work on Oct. 1 at 6 p.m., celebrating the first woman in British Columbia to open a professional photography studio.

The book's author, Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere, will appear in conversation with Sara Angel, founder and executive director of the Art Canada Institute. Registration for the free event is open through the museum's website.

Byline: Grace Kim

Who was Hannah Maynard?

Maynard lived from 1834 to 1918. She ranks among Canada's earliest professional women photographers. She arrived in Victoria in 1862 and opened her studio within a year, only two decades after the invention of photography itself.

She ran that studio for 50 years. It began on Johnston Street, moved to Douglas Street, and settled in 1892 at 49 ½ Pandora Street, a building that now houses John's Place Restaurant. Her clients ranged from babies to convicts, sailors to dignitaries, and servants to industrialists.

The takeaway: one woman built a five-decade commercial practice in a frontier town, decades before photography was a common trade.

What does the book cover?

Cavaliere traces Maynard's career as an entrepreneur, innovator, and mother of four who promoted herself as a "photographic artist." The work ranged from uncanny multiple-exposure images and imaginative tableaux vivants to documentary assignments as an ethnographic and police photographer.

"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," Cavaliere said in a news release.

She added: "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."

The takeaway: the book frames Maynard's experimental portraiture not as a curiosity but as the core of a serious, self-aware artistic practice.

How did Maynard see her own legacy?

Upon retiring in 1912, Maynard looked back on half a century behind the camera in Victoria. Her verdict was simple and confident.

"I think I can say with confidence that we photographed everybody in the town at one time or another," she reflected.

The archival record at the Royal BC Museum now backs the claim, holding what Cavaliere calls an unusually complete visual record of one photographer's life and community.

The takeaway: a studio built on commissions from convicts and industrialists alike became, in effect, the portrait archive of an entire city.

The Oct. 1 launch at the Royal BC Museum signals where this material is heading next: from the museum's collection into public view, with the Art Canada Institute platform giving Maynard's life and work a national readership.