THE introducer into Britain of the fine art of photogravure is son of a late member of the well-known firm of photographers of which he is now a partner. He was born at Hamilton in 1864, educated at Hamilton Academy and Anderson's College, Glasgow, and took to photography by a natural process of heredity. In 1883 he went to Vienna to learn the new and then secret process of photogravure, and was the first to practise the art in this country. At the first exhibition of the Photographic Salon in 1893 he shewed some of his work, and as a result was forthwith elected a member of the select international body of artistic photographers known as the Linked Ring. Since then he has, by special invitation, exhibited in nearly every country in Europe, as well as in America. In 1900 the Royal Photographic Society decided to hold a series of "one man shows" in their new rooms in Russell Square, London, and they invited him to furnish the material for the first of the series, which he did. In 1904 he was appointed, along with Sir William Abney, K.C.B., by the Royal Commission for the St. Louis Exhibition, to represent this country on the International Jury for Photography, Photo-process, and Photo-appliances. To Mr. Annan's artistic taste and technical skill is to be attributed much of the beauty of many volumes issued by his own and other firms, which have effected so signal a revolution in the whole art of book illustration within the last twenty years.
Back to
Index of Glasgow Men (1909)