[2][3] In 1891 Annan was elected to membership of Glasgow Art Club as a "photographic artist.

The Linked Ring (also known as "The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring") was a photographic society created to propose and defend that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, motivated to propelling photography further into the fine art world.

[5] He also gave lectures to the Edinburgh Photographic Society, on The Arts of Engraving (December 1901) and Photography as a Means of Artistic Expression (May 1910.

He exhibited further, at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901; the Paris Salon; the 1910 International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and in 1904, the Royal Commission for the Saint Louis World's Fair chose Annan and Sir William Abney to represent Britain on the International Jury for Photography, Photo-process, and Photo-appliances.

[3][7] Annan was to influence the development of photography in North America through having his work exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession Galleries in New York, and being featured in the American photographic periodical Camera Notes, published by The Camera Club of New York from 1897 to 1903 and of which Stieglitz was editor, and featured (1905,1909, 1912) in the quarterly photographic journal Camera Work (published by Stieglitz in New York between 1903 and 1917).