These images of Italy arose from a trip the Scottish photographer James Craig Annan made to the country in 1894 with the artist, David Young Cameron. The photographs he took during this trip, which are represented in this book, are regarded as some of his finest. They show his mastery of using a hand-held camera to capture fleeting moments (what Cartier Bresson would later define as the 'decisive moment'). The resulting 11 photogravures (etchings derived from the photographic negatives) are classics of the pictorialist tradition in late 19th-century and early 20th-century photography. The hugely influential American art dealer, publisher, and editor Alfred Stieglitz referred to one the prints reproduced in this book 'The white friars' as "one of the greatest pictures ever made by means of the camera". This copy is supposedly no. 5 of 75 copies, although it is highly likely, due to the book's great rarity, that far fewer than 75 copies in book form were actually produced.
Purchased with assistance of the Art Fund and Friends of the National Libraries.