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E-book Thomas Annan of Glasgow : Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph

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Penilaian

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Victorian Scotland was the site of an astonishing florescence of photography, and Thomas Annan was one of an impressive cohort of Scottish masters of the young medium. Born in 1829 into a farming and flax-spinning family in Dairsie, Fife, in the East of Scotland, he left home at the age of fifteen to join the staff of the local Fife Herald newspaper, based in the nearby county capital of Cupar, as an apprentice lithographic engraver. Having completed his projected seven-year apprenticeship in four years, he moved to the then rapidly expanding and industrializing city of Glasgow in the West of Scotland, where, on the strength of a glowing reference from the Herald, he obtained a position in the large lithographic establishment of Joseph Swan, who had set up in the city in 1818 and developed a thriving business in illustrations for mechanical inventions, maps for street directories, book-plates, and, not least, books on Scottish scenes illustrated by engravings of landscape paintings. Over the next six years Annan honed his engraving skills at Swan’s.3In 1855, still in his mid-twenties, Thomas Annan decided to set up in business on his own. By this time, however, the rapid rise of photography on a commercial scale had led to a drop-off in the lithographic trade. In addition, Annan may well have doubted that he could compete in lithography with his former employer’s well-established company. It was probably for both reasons that he decided to switch fields and explore the possibilities of photography.Despite its huge initial success, especially in Continental Europe and the United States (Britain was the only country where its use was restricted by a patent), Louis Daguerre’s “daguerreotype,” which had been invented around 1835-1837 and publicized in 1839, had begun to give way to a completely different photographic process discovered in 1835 and much improved in 1841 by the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot. Unlike the daguerreotype, which had no negative and produced only a single image, albeit an extremely precise and detailed one, Talbot’s “calotype” allowed for the production of multiple images from a single negative.4 In addition, some photographers and critics preferred it because they believed it gave more scope to the photographer than the daguerreotype, which in their view was in fact too precise and detailed and thus “could not record the sentiments of the mind”5 (i.e. the daguerreotype left no room for the insights and imagination of the photographer).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

770 GOS t

Penerbit

London : Open Book Publishers., 2015

Deskripsi Fisik

194 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781783741274

Klasifikasi

770

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Photography and Photographs

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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