Old Houses Corner of George Street and High Street
Medium
Photogravure, plate 40 from the book "The Old Closes & Streets of Glasgow" (1900)
Dimensions
Image: 16.2 × 23 cm (6 7/16 × 9 1/16 in.); Paper: 27.6 × 37.8 cm (10 7/8 × 14 15/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
234044
Art Historical Context
James Craig Annan's *Old Houses Corner of George Street and High Street* (1897) captures a poignant slice of late-19th-century Glasgow, showcasing the city's dense, weathered tenements at a bustling intersection. As plate 40 from the landmark book *The Old Closes & Streets of Glasgow* (1900), this photogravure documents the vanishing world of Scotland's industrial heartland, where narrow "closes" (alleys) and crowded housing defined urban life amid rapid modernization. A master of photogravure—a meticulous intaglio printing process that blends photography's precision with the rich tones of et...
About the Artist
James Craig Annan
James Craig Annan (1864–1946) was a Scottish photographer widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the Pictorialist movement that sought to establish photography as a legitimate fine art at the turn of the twentieth century. The son of the distinguished Glasgow photographer Thomas Annan, James Craig grew up immersed in the craft and business of photography, inheriting both his father's tec...