eben.blake
slumphoto
Source: Photo of a Glasgow Slum, Glasgo, 1868, British Library, Annan, Thomas, www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dickens/poverty/photo/slum.html.
This photo was taken by Thomas Annan in 1868 and depicts a family in the alleyway of a Glasgow slum. Annan was employed by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to record and photograph the poverty of the city's slums. This effort to broadcast urban poverty offered an almost anthropological opportunity for middle class viewers to see the cramped living conditions and derelict houses of the poor. Like his American counterpart, Jacob Riis, Annan attempted to communicate industrial squalor through a visual medium. This visuality follows the same Victorian principles of exoticism and pictorial representation that appeared in the department store and the Great Exhibition, yet communicate pathos and empathy rather than fascination and intrigue.
The photo itself remains an interesting artifact. With the family crammed into the narrow corridor in the back of the image, Annan demonstrates the terrible living conditions of the day, alongside the disorder and lack of space. As noted in class, in these slums there is barely any room to dry clothes. The family in the background remains small compared to the crumbling infrastructure--their faces are blurry and small, as though their own identity becomes minimized in the surrounding poverty. Moreover, Annan plays on the lighting of the scene, creating an image where the camera itself falls into the cramped shadow, as though it were part of the slum as well, while the family stands in open sunlight, posing for the picture to be taken.
slumphoto
Source: Photo of a Glasgow Slum, Glasgo, 1868, British Library, Annan, Thomas, www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dickens/poverty/photo/slum.html.
This photo was taken by Thomas Annan in 1868 and depicts a family in the alleyway of a Glasgow slum. Annan was employed by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to record and photograph the poverty of the city's slums. This effort to broadcast urban poverty offered an almost anthropological opportunity for middle class viewers to see the cramped living conditions and derelict houses of the poor. Like his American counterpart, Jacob Riis, Annan attempted to communicate industrial squalor through a visual medium. This visuality follows the same Victorian principles of exoticism and pictorial representation that appeared in the department store and the Great Exhibition, yet communicate pathos and empathy rather than fascination and intrigue.
The photo itself remains an interesting artifact. With the family crammed into the narrow corridor in the back of the image, Annan demonstrates the terrible living conditions of the day, alongside the disorder and lack of space. As noted in class, in these slums there is barely any room to dry clothes. The family in the background remains small compared to the crumbling infrastructure--their faces are blurry and small, as though their own identity becomes minimized in the surrounding poverty. Moreover, Annan plays on the lighting of the scene, creating an image where the camera itself falls into the cramped shadow, as though it were part of the slum as well, while the family stands in open sunlight, posing for the picture to be taken.