The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow
Annan, Thomas
Glasgow. James MacLehose and Sons. 1900
Sold
First expanded edition of Annan's photographic masterpiece, containing 50 photogravure plates, with this one of only 100 copies specially printed for the Corporation of Glasgow.
Rapid industrialisation in Scotland in the nineteenth century had led to an enormously squalid urban situation, especially in Glasgow where a large part of the urban poor were cloistered in densely packed closes or 'wynds' in the city centre. In 1866 the city passed the Glasgow Improvements Act which authorised the demolition of these slums and Thomas Annan, a former copper-plate engraver who had taken up photography through D. O. Hill, was commissioned by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to document both the horrendous squalor and the architectural fabric for posterity. Between 1868 and 1877 Annan used the wet collodion process - a natural choice given the poor light available in the narrow passages and dank closes - to create a number of extraordinary photographs. The result was the first commissioned documentary photography record, preceding Thomson's Street Life in London by five years, and a glimpse of a world at once touchingly beautiful and starkly sordid. The alleys, corridors and closes are wonderfully real and many of the plates contain ghostly shadows and anonymous portraits, images of the the local people who found Annan's work as intriguing then as that vanished world is to us today.
The book was published in several distinct editions: the first, in as few as three or four copies, issued c.1872 was illustrated with albumen prints, the second, issued in 1878 comprised 40 large carbon prints. Presented here is the first expanded edition, the first issued in large numbers and with photogravures. Of its 50 plates, Thomas Annan's son James Craig made photogravures after 37 photographs taken by Annan, and completed the volume with photographs he had taken, adding the plate (Trongate in the Olden Time).
Two issues were published in 1900, each of 100 copies: one in blue cloth printed using inferior paper and the present more desirable issue in rose cloth, this being specially printed for the Corporation of Glasgow in a cloth binding, gilt embossed with the arms of the city.
'It is the consistently narrow form of the alley that gives formal coherence to most of Annan's imagery - he simply stood the camera in the middle of the passageway and shot down it. This lends the pictures an irresistible rhythm, a sense of leading somewhere. Coupled with the numerous glimpses of the closes' indigenous inhabitants, the device makes these compelling pictures amongst the most intimate and 'modern' in feeling of nineteenth-century documents.' (Gerry Badger).
Rapid industrialisation in Scotland in the nineteenth century had led to an enormously squalid urban situation, especially in Glasgow where a large part of the urban poor were cloistered in densely packed closes or 'wynds' in the city centre. In 1866 the city passed the Glasgow Improvements Act which authorised the demolition of these slums and Thomas Annan, a former copper-plate engraver who had taken up photography through D. O. Hill, was commissioned by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to document both the horrendous squalor and the architectural fabric for posterity. Between 1868 and 1877 Annan used the wet collodion process - a natural choice given the poor light available in the narrow passages and dank closes - to create a number of extraordinary photographs. The result was the first commissioned documentary photography record, preceding Thomson's Street Life in London by five years, and a glimpse of a world at once touchingly beautiful and starkly sordid. The alleys, corridors and closes are wonderfully real and many of the plates contain ghostly shadows and anonymous portraits, images of the the local people who found Annan's work as intriguing then as that vanished world is to us today.
The book was published in several distinct editions: the first, in as few as three or four copies, issued c.1872 was illustrated with albumen prints, the second, issued in 1878 comprised 40 large carbon prints. Presented here is the first expanded edition, the first issued in large numbers and with photogravures. Of its 50 plates, Thomas Annan's son James Craig made photogravures after 37 photographs taken by Annan, and completed the volume with photographs he had taken, adding the plate (Trongate in the Olden Time).
Two issues were published in 1900, each of 100 copies: one in blue cloth printed using inferior paper and the present more desirable issue in rose cloth, this being specially printed for the Corporation of Glasgow in a cloth binding, gilt embossed with the arms of the city.
'It is the consistently narrow form of the alley that gives formal coherence to most of Annan's imagery - he simply stood the camera in the middle of the passageway and shot down it. This lends the pictures an irresistible rhythm, a sense of leading somewhere. Coupled with the numerous glimpses of the closes' indigenous inhabitants, the device makes these compelling pictures amongst the most intimate and 'modern' in feeling of nineteenth-century documents.' (Gerry Badger).
pp. 23. Folio. Half-title, title printed in red and black, list of plates, preface by William Young and 50 photogravure plates. Original publisher's rose cloth, gilt armorial vignette of Glasgow to upper board, additional gilt armorial vignette to rear board, title gilt to spine, t.e.g.
#35650
