In the wake of Glasgow’s transformation in the nineteenth-century into an industrial powerhouse — the "Second City of the Empire" — a substantial part of the old town of Adam Smith degenerated into an overcrowded and disease-ridden slum. The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, Thomas Annan’s photographic record of this central section of the city prior to its demolition in accordance with the City of Glasgow Improvements Act of 1866, is widely recognized as a classic of nineteenth-century documentary photography. Annan’s achievement as a photographer of paintings, portraits and landscapes is less widely known. Thomas Annan of Glasgow: Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph offers a handy, comprehensive and copiously illustrated overview of the full range of the photographer’s work. The book opens with a brief account of the immediate context of Annan’s career as a photographer: the astonishing florescence of photography in Victorian Scotland. Successive chapters deal with each of the main fields of his activity, touching along the way on issues such as the nineteenth-century debate over the status of photography — a mechanical practice or an artistic one? — and the still ongoing controversies surrounding the documentary photograph in particular. While the text itself is intended for the general reader, extensive endnotes amplify particular themes and offer guidance to readers interested in pursuing them further.

Thomas Annan (1829–1887) was the preeminent photographer of Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, a period when the rise in industry and population dramatically altered the landscape of the “second city” of the British Empire. Often working in conjunction with civic projects, Annan produced numerous series that underscore the transformation of the city and its environs, though he remains best known for one series in particular: a group of enigmatic photographs of central Glasgow's narrow alleys, or closes, on the verge of demolition. These haunting images, made between 1868 and 1871 and regarded as precursors of the documentary tradition in photography, represent the notion of progress that underpins much of Annan’s oeuvre. Annan’s publication history serves as the organizing principle for this book, which considers both the breadth of his body of work as well as the multiple formats in which his photographs appeared and circulated. Featured here are seven examples— including private albums and commercial books—that focus on subjects as varied as the city’s streets and closes, the Loch Katrine aqueduct, Glasgow College, the cathedral, and the country estates of the landed gentry, highlighting Annan’s extensive engagement with the city of Glasgow. Plates from each of these works are faithfully reproduced in full color, and an introductory essay by the leading authority on Annan surveys the life and career of this widely influential photographer.

Glasgow is not just famous for its humor, its shipyards, and its bold Victorian architecture, built in the days when it was the "second city of the Empire." It's also renowned as the home in the UK of the failed experiment with modernist architecture in the 1950s and 1960s--where those cleared from 19th century slums of the Gorbals and Govan were housed in vast tower block estates far from the city center, devoid of facilities and a sense of community. Initially a huge improvement on existing living conditions, a lack of investment and poor build quality meant these bold visions of the future soon fell into neglect. Here acclaimed photographer Chris Leslie and author and Professor of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art Johnny Rodger examine Glasgow's process of demolishing these contentious estates. For some they are blights on the city's international reputation, for some an important attempt to redefine the way we live, and for others they were home. This is a beautiful, highly visual book that is both fascinating and moving in equal measure.

Thomas Annan established his photography business in 1855, and within a matter of years had become Glasgow's pre-eminent commercial photographer. This stunning selection of photographs from the company's archive records city life and shipping on the Clyde in both the relatively recent past and during Glasgow's Victorian heyday. There are classic views of High Street and the neighbouring streets before much of the area was cleared in the 1860s, as well as photographs of the city centre in the era of trams and horse-drawn transport. A chapter on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Kate Cranston recalls the collaboration between these legendary Glasgow figures, with the buildings and interiors they worked on captured in T. & R. Annan's photographs.