Beaumier Center Highlights Mary Jayne Hallifax's Photography

The Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center at NMU will open a new exhibition July 9 that features the work of one of the U.P.'s most prolific photographers. It is titled "Munising in Black & White: The Photographs of Mary Jayne Hallifax." She was an in-demand commercial photographer who also captured numerous candid images of her hometown over seven decades.

Hallifax died in 2025 at the age of 96 and donated many of her original negatives to photograph collector Jack Deo, who is loaning 60 images to the Beaumier Center for the exhibit. They represent a tiny fragment of her catalog and focus specifically on the 1950s and 1960s, depicting community events, street scenes, school activities and the lives of people in the community.

A lifelong Munising resident, Mary Jayne (Shampine) Hallifax was a 1946 graduate of W.G. Mather High School. While working on the school's yearbook, she was asked by the school secretary to take help develop and print photographs, and from that her lifelong love with photography began.

After she graduated and started working, Mary Jayne spent her nights taking photos and developing them. It became such a passion that she gave up her job at People's State Bank to pursue photography full time. She soon became Munising's most in demand commercial photographer, especially for weddings and senior photos. However, she also loved just wandering the streets of Munising taking candid photos of people and the general "goings-on" in the community. She even took photos for the Michigan State Police crime lab.

In 1948, Mary Jayne married Richard Hallifax, and the pair worked on photography together. He did much of the film developing and press work, while she focused on making prints, and her portraiture studio work with families, wedding parties and graduating students. During her career with newspaper work and even into retirement, she photographed seven Michigan governors on their trips to Munising: G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams, John Swainson, George Romney, William Milliken, James Blanchard, John Engler and Rick Snyder.

Up until her 95th birthday, she had a weekly column "All About Town with Mary Jayne" or "Down Memory Lane in Alger County" for the Marquette Mining Journal and years earlier for the Munising News.

The exhibition will be on display through Oct. 3 at the Beaumier Center's gallery in 223 Harden Hall at NMU. The center's summer hours are noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. It is free and open to the public.