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Minna Keene, née Bergman, photographer (born 5 April 1861 in Arolsen, Germany; died November 1943 in Oakville, ON). A self-taught photographer, Keene was a member of the London Salon, a society devoted to the promotion of pictorial photography. In 1908, she became the first woman to be admitted as a fellow to the Royal Photographic Society. She immigrated to Canada just before the First World War.
Minna Keene was given her first camera in the 1890s by her husband, Englishman Caleb Keene, a landscape painter and decorator. She was an established photographer by the time she and her family immigrated to Canada in about 1913. Keene founded a studio in Montreal and was soon commissioned by the CPR to photograph the Rockies (1914–15). She worked closely on this and other projects with her daughter, Violet Keene Perinchief, who was also a photographer. (Her son, Louis Keene, was an artist and army officer.) By 1918, Minna Keene had opened a second studio in Montreal and a studio in Toronto. In 1922, the family relocated to Oakville, where she operated another studio.
Keene travelled, exhibited and lectured widely. She received medals for photographic excellence in Japan, South Africa and Australia. Keene’s photographs are in the collections of Library and Archives Canada, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Image Centre.
