The Signet Library 200th Anniversary Online Exhibition

signet library collection guides

the thomas annan collection of early photography

2. the old country houses of the glasgow gentry

The old country houses of the old Glasgow gentry / Illustrated by permanent photographs by Annan [by John Buchanan] Second ed. [revised and enlarged by John Guthrie Smith and John Oswald Mitchell] Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1878

Because the Signet Library lacks either of the exceptionally scarce early editions of Thomas Annan's images of the Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, this is the oldest example in the collection of a classic Annan photobook. It dates from a period of high awareness in Glasgow's Victorian history of rapid and extreme development and change. Annan had been called on to record one aspect of the vanishing city - the High Street slums - and now he was asked to capture another at the opposite social extreme - the mansions of the wealthy.

These are a very different kind of image from Annan's slum pictures: the houses stand clear in their grounds, giving off an almost violent emptiness and sense of depopulation. There is nothing celebratory in the way the structures are recorded. Annan was present to photograph them at the very end of what for these buildings was the premodern era: gas and electricity were yet to arrive, and perhaps also proper sanitation. The telephone was decades away, and the only vehicles to arrive were drawn by horses. Some idea of this reaches the viewer and highlights the sense of alienation. That the images were taken during the winter months only reinforces this - and in an age when outdoor photography was still considered a seasonal pursuit, it is worthy of note in itself.

As with all of the books of this kind produced during Annan's lifetime, the photographs are actual prints. The publishing runs of the books were small: this second edition saw only 225 copies printed, following the 120 copies of the first edition.