Sara Stevenson – författare

David Octavius Hill (1802–70) was a pioneer photographer, painter, and lithographer. In 1843, he entered into partnership with the young photographer Robert Adamson, and in the next four years they produced an extraordinary body of original and inventive work. This book analyzes the photographic partnership, explains its remarkable success, and places it in the context of Hill’s life and times.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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 alleys, or "closes," on the verge of demolition. These haunting images, made between 1868 and 1871, and sometimes 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 examplesincluding private albums and commercial booksthat 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, and highlight 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 little-known but influential photographer.

In the middle of the nineteenth century a sympathetic relationship between art, science and technology laid the groundwork for photography to flourish, including camera obscura and the panorama. This is a lavishly produced book on the eventful first thirty years of photography in Scotland - around 1840 - 70. The photographers whose work is discussed include David Octavius Hill, Robert Adamson, James Valentine, Thomas Annan and George Washington Wilson plus practitioners not previously mentioned in any publication. Julia Margaret Cameron's encounter with Scotland is also described as is the work of Scottish photographers abroad.

Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery - which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection - and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.