The Road Through the Dunes Annan, James Craig  (British, 1864-1946)

The most important artistic decision was that the men and cart were caught in mid-step, making this a fine example photographic naturalism. Such works were very influential on the emergence of Stieglitz’s style between 1894 and 1900. [1]

The firm of Meisenbach, Riffart, founded by Heinrich Riffart (1860-1908) purchased rights to Kličs photogravure process simultaneously with the Annans. Born the son of a publisher in Munchen Gladbach, Riffart had studied chemistry in Vienna and Salzburg.

Photographische Rundschau (Photographic Review) began as the official magazine of the Club der Amateur Photographen in Wien in 1877, but within a year was published in Germany and distributed in Austria as well as Germany. It was one of the earliest magazines specifically produced for amateurs in the art and science of photography. Because these photographers were in virtually every case pictorialists, the journal was also among the chief vehicles for the international promotion and diffusion of works of the pictorialist school. Beginning in 1904 and lasting until 1911, the journal joined forces with publisher Wilhelm Knapp’s Photographisches Centralblatt, becoming the Photographische Rundschau und Photographisches Centralblatt.

Volumes contained full-page hand-pulled photogravures, additional sheet-fed gravures, as well as numerous half-tones by the world’s leading photographers of the time. Photographers include Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Julia Margaret Cameron, Clarence H. White, Heinrich Kühn, et al.

Reproduced / Exhibited

Naef, Weston J. The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography. New York: Viking Press, 1978. p. 11

References

[1] Naef, Weston J. The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography. New York: Viking Press, 1978. p. 11

J. M. Eder, A History of Photography, trans. E. Epstean, New York: Columbia University Press 1945, p. 599, p. 805

Steel, David. "Karel Klič and Thomas Annan in Vienna," History of Photography. 27.2 (2003): 166-171. Print.