23 and Mary: A Banning Abecedarium 

by Maya Han
2025; USA; digital video; 20 minutes (2 min. excerpt above)

Premiere at the 4.4.2025 opening reception of the exhibition “Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms” at the New York State Museum, Albany NY

23 and Mary: A Banning Abecedarium, is a poetic and illuminating glimpse into the life and art of Mary Elizabeth Banning (1822-1903), a pioneering 19th century American mycologist. Self-taught, and one of the first and only women in the then-burgeoning field of mycology, her magnum opus (of 175 stunning watercolor illustrations with scientifically accurate descriptions of her 23 new species discoveries) languished unpublished, hidden away and forgotten for nearly a century. Until now, nearly nothing had been available on Banning’s life and legacy—an issue common to the vast majority of historical women’s lives. The first documentary on this remarkable unsung heroine of science, with inventive formal strategies this film addresses the question:  “how can we construct biographies with an absence or dearth of information?”