(b 1829; d December, 1887). He lived for most of his life in Glasgow, and he trained and worked as a copperplate-engraver until 1853, when he started a calotype printing business, probably with the encouragement of his friend David Octavius Hill. Annan’s business proved successful and led in 1857 to the establishment of a photographic studio, T. & R. Annan in Sauchiehall Sreet. At first, Annan’s emphasis was on the photographic reproduction of works of art and on architectural photography, as in the collection of photographs of mansions around Glasgow, The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry (Glasgow, 1870). Having mastered the technical and practical difficulties of architectural photography, Annan turned his attention to portraits, at which he was equally gifted. The carbon prints contained in Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1871) consisted of both portraits and views of buildings. The process, for which he had acquired the Scottish patent rights shortly after its invention by Joseph Wilson Swan in 1866, produced rich, dark brown prints through the incorporation of a permanent pigment in a gelatin layer. Annan first used the carbon process commercially in 1866 in his reproduction of D. O. Hill’s painted group portrait, the Signing of the Deed of Demission (1843–65; Edinburgh, Free Church Assembly Hall) in which he himself featured. An astute businessman, Annan also acquired the British patent rights in the ‘heliogravure’ or photogravure process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot and developed by Karel Klíc (see PHOTOGRAPHY, §I), a photomechanical printing method that was employed to great effect by Annan’s son, (2) James Craig Annan.

Part of the Annan family

• Annan, Thomas
  • Annan
  • Photography, §II, 7: Social documentation