The latest British Library exhibition, on photography in the 19th century, has an online gallery which effectively means you can see much of it from the comfort of your computer screen, without the bother of going down to the Euston Road and having to elbow the aged and infirm out of your way to get a better view, as I did this morning.
And you get the benefits of modern technology. So, for instance, with this 1883 photo of Macclesfield Street in Soho…
[Photographers: Henry Dixon and Son]
…you can read Sarah Waters' comment, then zoom in for a closer inspection. Or this 1898 picture of workers building the (now closed) British Museum station on the Central Line: without the zoom facility you'd never know that only men with moustaches were employed underground.
Or this 1868 picture of a Glasgow tenement, by Thomas Annan, with John Berger's comment:
‘Glasgow today is the only city in Great Britain familiar with poverty, which denounces that imposed poverty, but which is never ashamed of it! Thomas Annan's photograph, taken five generations ago, is a very moving and remarkable testimony to this.’
Eh?
Mick Hartley 
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