[Thomas Annan (1829-1887)]

Glasgow City Improvement Trust: Photographs of Old Closes, Streets, &c., Taken 1868-1877. Glasgow, [no date]

Folio (509 x 407mm.), title, table of contents, 40 carbon prints on card mounts, mounted one to a page with printed titles, varying sizes (c.290 x 275mm. to 233 x 283mm., or the reverse), dark green morocco gilt by R. Nelson, embossed arms of the City of Glasgow to upper cover, gilt edges, silk endpapers, some spotting to mounts, extremities slightly rubbed

ONE OF 60 COPIES OF THIS RARE PHOTOBOOK ILLUSTRATED WITH FINE CARBON PRINTS. Before the publication of the present work Annan produced in 1872 a small edition with 31 albumen prints under the title Old closes and streets of Glasgow. A later edition of Old Closes and Streets was published i☂n 1900, limited to 100 copies, with 50 photogravure plates.

"Classics of social documentary" (BL). Thomas Annan's reputation rests on this "remarkable series of photographs...commissioned by the city authorities to mark the first slum clearances, which were authorized in 1866". Annan's photographs were "designed to record the history of the buildings as well as the dreadful living conditions", and they have a "curious character of optimism, in celebration of the great civic proposal and the liberation offered to the inhabitants" (ODNB).

Thomas Annan''s photographs in this album are amongst the earliest taken specifically as a record of housing conditions prior to urban renewal and as such they are an important milestone in the history of documentary p🌳hotography.

In an unusual move Thomas Annan was commissioned to record the buildings&n🍷bsp;of the slums of the City Parish after the city passed the Glasgow City Improvements Act in 1866 which envisaged the demolition&n♉bsp;of the unhealthy "wynds" and "closes" at the heart of the city.