Original copy for this entry posted to Facebook on February 5, 2012:

This early portrait of a child holding a peacock feather taken by Scottish photographer James Craig Annan was included in the very first British Linked Ring portfolio produced and published by the English copper-plate engraver and Linked Ring member Walter Colls for their 1895 Salon. The web cannot do justice to these oversized photogravures, (11 x 15″) and they are historically important in that they influenced Alfred Stieglitz, who several years later began publishing them as gravures in the New York Camera Club’s journal “Camera Notes.” He penned the following in the second issue of the journal: (October, 1897) “It is with pleasure that we call the attention of our readers to the Photographic Salon Portfolios of 1895 and 1896, published by Walter Colls, in London. It is astonishing that these important collections of photogravures are quite unknown to American photographers.” All the 1895 plates from the original portfolio as well as select plates from the 1896 version can be found on the site.