Hannah Hatherley Maynard at her desk in the parlour of the Maynard home c.1895

This self-portrait, Hannah Hatherley Maynard at her desk in the parlour of the Maynard home, provides a glimpse into the photographer’s personal world. Seated in her parlour with a wall of photographs behind her, we see the ways that photography physically consumed Maynard’s personal space. As well, we see how domestic concerns—represented by plants, textiles, and furnishings—found their way into her photographic practice.

Maynard was as much a collector of photographs as she was a maker. In this image, the range of portraits behind her speak to the broad network of relationships she shared across Victoria and beyond. Her desk overflows with photographs, neatly stacked papers, and a large record book. Across from her, she has plants stacked and arranged to take advantage of the light streaming into what is also her studio. These were a source of inspiration for Maynard. The large potted Dieffenbachia plant held by a statue of a child or cherub, for instance, was used as the starting point for her 1884 Gems photograph.

Photography offered Maynard social, economic, and professional opportunities that might have otherwise been off limits to a woman in the late nineteenth century. That said, much contemporary scholarship on Maynard has reflected on the influence of the domestic, the domestic arts, and “women’s work” on her studio and the photographs she made there.  Jennifer Salahub has written about the ways that the studio rooms, which were connected to the Maynard family home, were carefully furnished and decorated to present the appearance of a respectable, middle-class, settler home.  Portraits of the photographer perched among a range of handmade and hand-embroidered textiles, crocheting tools in hand, reinforced this idea.

Hannah Hatherley Maynard at her desk in the parlour of the Maynard home and the photographs like it that provide a glimpse into Maynard’s physical spaces also shed light on the different ways that she combined photography with the objects around her to express aspects of her own personal life. For example, flowers acted as a reminder of life and death. After the death of her daughter, Laura Lillian Maynard (1867–1883), affectionately known as Lillie, lily flowers became a frequent motif in Maynard’s work. In Vase of lilies with Hannah’s portrait, c.1895, she has photographed a bursting arrangement of flowers in a small vase affixed with a small self-portrait, perhaps a reference to the relationship between mother and daughter.

In Hannah Maynard in her parlour, 1892–93, we see Maynard sitting among a series of similarly adorned vases and platters, as well as photographs printed directly on fabrics, perhaps a cyanotype, a popular type of photographic print that yields a striking blue image. There are also souvenirs of her travels, collected artworks, and portraits of her deceased daughters, Lillian and Emma, as well as daughter-in-law Adelaide, arranged in a shrine with tealights. Maynard’s professional and creative interests in photography are inseparable from her personal life and the space occupied by her.