The 19th century photographer, Thomas Annan, has become inexorably linked with the city of Glasgow. Thomas Annan was not born in Glasgow however: the son of a Fife flax spinner, he was apprenticed as a lithographic engraver for the Fife Herald in the nearby town of Cupar.
His experiences as a lithographer (printing and working to fine degrees of accuracy) were to prove useful in his future career: initially as a lithographer for the Glaswegian publisher Joseph Swan and, subsequently, when establishing his own business with George Berwick as a calotypist. Finally, the partnership was dissolved, and Thomas Annan founded his own photographic studio and printing works in the heart of Glasgow.
Annan’s photographs of Glasgow seem to capture localities on the brink of change: the first edition of Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow (first titled Photographs of Glasgow College in 1866) records the Old College buildings before they were demolished to build a goods yard for the Glasgow Union Railway Company. In their work Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow, Maddox and Stevenson describe the importance of the area:
“...these were distinguished buildings, redolent of history. The strength of Annan’s photographs, the density of light and dark in the images, and the emptiness of the site all contribute to a necessary sense of sadness and abandonment.”
It is Thomas Annan’s Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow that has really brought him to the attention of both photographic and social historians. This work turns away from academic and genteel life and looks towards Glasgow’s 19th century slums, which were regarded as the worst in Europe. Cramped and unhygienic conditions contributed to the spread of deadly diseases such as typhus and typhoid fever and, in 1866, an Act of Parliament allowed for the slums to be demolished. Annan decided to record Glasgow’s city centre and slums before they were destroyed. His photographs maintain the attractive framing and shading of his earlier work – no mean feat in amongst a crowded inner-city environment with dark and damp closes - whilst also adopting a documentary air.
Annan spent four years recording the streets between 1868 and 1871, before selling the prints to Glasgow City Improvement Trust, who were charged with the demolition of the slums. Three editions of the work were produced: 1872, 1877 and this (lot 338) 1900 photogravure edition, in fact produced by Annan’s son. The images are still deeply affecting. Photographs such as ‘Old Vennel off High Street’ show tiny children without shoes in damp and dirty streets. Others simply give a precise impression of the city in the late 19th century or show an otherwise unnoticed passageway leading between two buildings. Maddox and Stevenson see a sense of optimism in Annan’s works: yes, the unhygienic slums are being demolished but the children in the photographs may now have a chance to thrive.
Thomas Annan’s legacy continued following his death in 1887. His sons, John and James Craig Annan, continued the family business, with James Craig focussing on portrait photography and John looking more into architectural photography. Thomas Annan had also purchased Rock House and, along with this, many negatives made by the pioneering photographers Hill and Adamson. James Craig Annan eventually exhibited these, making them available for Alfred Stieglitz to include them in his journal, Camera Work.