80 Views on the Frazer River c.1885

Eager to experiment with techniques such as composite photography and collage, Hannah Maynard can take credit for the more imaginative intersections of her and her husband Richard’s photographic practices. The image 80 Views on the Frazer River brings together landscape views made by Richard and his colleague Frederick Dally (1838–1914) in a collage composed by Hannah. The views were taken by Richard as part of his work photographing the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway line between Yale and Boston Bar, where it follows the Fraser River. Some of the views made by Dally are drawn from his work in the same region, and the Maynards later acquired his negatives.

The photographic pursuits of Hannah and Richard were typically kept separate. However, their work did intersect in sometimes practical, and sometimes imaginative, ways. Practically, the studio was a home base where they did their printing and where they sold photographs to the public. They also travelled together, which meant that some outdoor views sold at the studio were produced by Hannah. The photographs that make up 80 Views on the Frazer River were made for government purposes by Richard and Dally as part of their commissioned work, but they were also sold directly from the studio to satisfy the large public interest in landscape views of remote parts of British Columbia.

Quick to market both her skills and the images, Hannah created a collage of eighty of the photographs, joining them with a dimensional border of putty or paste. The result is chaotic and beautiful. A variety of scenes and subjects are drawn together around a central anchoring image of a landscape with a large sun hovering over a mountain range. Maynard trimmed the images to different sizes and arranged them at angles overlapping one another.

Art and craft historian Jennifer Salahub has suggested that Maynard’s decision to assemble this collection of views was inspired by popular quilting practices of the time. She writes that the collage is “not unlike the contrasting silk threads that framed the patches that made up crazy quilts,” which were popular toward the end of the century and involved the assembly of fabric patches that did not repeat in pattern or motif and were connected by heavily embellished seams. There are many portraits of Maynard in the act of crocheting, and it is a reasonable assumption that she would have been very familiar with crafts such as quilting.

The collision of quilting and photographic collage is a unique outcome of Maynard’s position balancing photographic entrepreneurship with the domestic obligations of a Victorian woman. Once assembled, the collage was rephotographed as a large 12 by 10 inch (30.5 x 25.4 cm) negative so that it could be easily reproduced. In the glass plate negative you can see small clips that held the collage up to be photographed. A similar process was used for Maynard’s Gems of British Columbia series. There are several copies of 80 Views on the Frazer River in the collections of the BC Archives, an indication of the interest in landscape and Maynard’s creative approach to it.