The Signet Library 200th Anniversary Online Exhibition

signet library collection guides

the thomas annan collection of early photography

5. The old closes and streets of glasgow

The Old Closes & Streets of Glasgow / Engraved by Annan from Photographs taken for the City of Glasgow Improvement Trust; with an introduction by William Young. Glasgow : James MacLehose, 1900

Thomas Annan's greatest, best-known photography is his work on commission for the City of Glasgow recording the slums in and around the High Street prior to their redevelopment at the beginning of the 1870s. The images have an interesting publishing history. Annan's original 1868-1871 series of albumen prints were created in very limited numbers at the instigation of the City Improvement Trust. Knowledge of the images appears to have spread sufficiently to generate demand by 1878 for an edition of 100 copies, distributed largely amongst institutional collections. This new edition used Joseph Swan's carbon print process, for which Annan had secured exclusive Scottish rights. It was one of the first recognised uses of photography for the purposes of social record.

The Signet Library copy is the third edition of 1900, in which Thomas Annan's images were reproduced by photogravure, and augmented by new images of the city produced by his son James Craig Annan (himself a photographer of the very first rank). Thomas's images appear to have been sharpened for this edition, of which 100 copies were produced by Annan for the Corporation of Glasgow and a further 150 copies published by James Maclehose for open sale (the Signet Library copy is drawn from this tranche).

Annan's pictures of the Glasgow Closes were a technical tour de force, stretching the existing capabilities of Victorian photography to its absolute limit in the challenging light and milieu of the slums. Writing in 2015, Sara Stevenson and Alison Morison-Low reflect on the stressed chemistry of Annan's prints, and his willingness to attempt near-impossible shots in order to capture the real life (and optimism against the odds) found in the Glasgow Closes at the end of the 1860s.