Annan became a popular portrait photographer; however, he continued to produce his own work, primarily portraits and genre scenes. In 1894 he was elected to The Linked Ring, England’s most prestigious group of creative photographers. A few years later, Annan published a limited-edition portfolio of his work, Venice And Lombardy: A Series Of Original Photogravures. He exhibited widely at such venues as the London Salon, the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition, Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession galleries, the Paris Salon, and the 1910 International Exhibition Of Pictorial Photography at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. In 1900 Annan gave a solo retrospective at the Royal Photographic Society, which subsequently awarded him an honorary fellowship.

Unlike other photographers, Annan supplied his own photogravures for Camera Notes (1898–1903), the top photographic periodical in the United States at the time. Shortly thereafter, when Alfred Stieglitz began publishing the even more sumptuous journal Camera Work, Annan continued to contribute his own work and gravures by other British photographers, such as George Davison. Stieglitz included twenty-five of Annan’s photogravures in the magazine and devoted the entire January 1914 (no. 45) issue to him.

Annan rediscovered the work of other photographers and oversaw the production of intaglio prints by contemporary artists. For instance, he printed from the negatives of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, inspiring renewed interest in their work and photographic partnership. At T. & R. Annan, he supervised the printing of etchings and engravings by such artists as Muirhead Bone and William Strang. Annan and Alfred Stieglitz were exact contemporaries with a shared commitment to high-quality gravure printing and photography as a fine art. For over twenty years, the two corresponded both personally and professionally.

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