Close Quarters
Thomas Annan, "Close no.11, Bridgegate, Glasgow," 1897.
Thomas Annan is best known for documenting slum conditions in Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century. His photographs of the “closes” of the old city show the growing population, displaced from living on the land and recruited into factory work, squeezed into a new urban landscape. The buildings are literally close and Annan draws on perspective to emphasize the narrowing retreat of these alleys into dead-end space. Brick walls appear to emerge organically from flagstones and reach toward the light, which often seems to be elsewhere. Here, the rectangular unit of the brick is repeated everywhere: the shadowed entry in the left foreground, the peeling wood plank on the right, the windows in the building high above and far behind, and finally the apotheosis of light on the back wall. That lit wall makes a beautiful pairing with the bleak, empty doorway up front, lessening the harsh effect of the image. The stripe of light that bisects the composition is broken, but it does enter the frame.
This image is unusual for having a figure in it. The person provides a focal point for the dizzying, grid-like composition of bricks. She becomes a living scale by which to judge the size of this social problem. The cage-like impression of her habitat is underlined by the wooden door frame in the foreground, making it seem as if she is somehow indoors, as if we are outside looking in to her domain. Which of course we are — and so is Annan. Unless we are inside and she is the one looking in? The door frame, like the photograph itself, reveals her to be both accessible and inaccessible at the same time. The intersecting lines, angles, and light make meaning much less stable than it seems.
In: architecture, documentary, nineteenth century, photography, street life · Tagged with: Glasgow, Thomas Annan