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Archway in Inner Court, Looking towards the Outer Court, with Zachary Boyd’s Bust Annan, Thomas  (Scottish, 1829-1887)

The only major work by Thomas Annan that illustrates both his mastery of architectural and portrait photography. The photographs of the University of Glasgow generally show the complex of buildings of the University which had been left stranded in the midst of the slums as the city had moved west – the slums that were so startlingly photographed by Annan a few years earlier in his groundbreaking Old Streets and Closes. When an offer came from the North British Railway to purchase the site of the University of Glasgow and fund a new university in the West End, the inadequate buildings were doomed. Annan conceived the present volume as a memorial to the 450-year history of the University and as a record of the ‘venerable structure before it underwent any change.’ Consequently he here presents 15 interior and external views of the buildings with various aspects of the Inner and Outer Courts, the Professor’s Court and the Hunterian Museum. Annan added 26 portrait photographs of members of the Senate at the time of the removal to the New Buildings. The volume was published as albumen prints and carbon prints. [1]

Reproduced / Exhibited

Maddox, Amanda, Sara Stevenson, and Thomas Annan. Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow. , 2017. Figure 32.

References

[1] Goldschmidt, Lucien, and Weston J. Naef. The Truthful Lens: A Survey of the Photographically Illustrated Book, 1844-1914. New York: The Grolier club, 1980. no. 121

Maddox, Amanda, Sara Stevenson, and Thomas Annan. Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow. , 2017.

Gossman, Lionel. Thomas Annan of Glasgow: Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015 5:12

Stevenson, Sara. Thomas Annan, 1829-1887. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1990.