I am very happy for posting those pictures of Anna for you. Now may I tell you some things about them:
As I have mentioned before, my mother has some glass negatives she found some years ago in an old books shop. 23 of them are pictures of the imperial family, taken from Anna's album(s), and 2 of them are the ones of Anna herself I posted here. Some of the pictures have presumably Anna's writing from the album on them, as you can see on the picture below:
We have carefully looked through the negatives, over and over again, and have come to the conclusion that quite possibly the negatives are the very same that have been used in Anna's memoirs, the Finnish edition from 1987. The pictures have the same flaws - and some of them are slightly out of focus, which very easily happened using the old fashion reprographic cameras. So maybe when the first publishing agreement was made in Viipuri in 1937, publishing agency took some photographs of the photo albums. And later, after Anna already had sold the albums, there were only the negatives left to use in the book. This is only speculation, of course, so please correct me if I'm wrong!
But the negatives of Anna herself are very sharp and the hue variation is perfect. Joanna, you may be right about the pictures having been taken in Viipuri. If it is so, the pictures were possibly taken in 1937 when Anna was 53 and had just finished writing the Russian manuscript of her memoirs. What do you think, would that sound and look right?
When the Winter War broke out in '39, Anna and her friend Vera Sapevalov left to Sweden. Their expenses were paid by the Swedish royal family. Right after the Winter War ended in the spring of 1940, Anna and Vera came back to Finland. Viipuri was now part of the Soviet Union, so they moved to Helsinki. Because of the war the housing situation was very bad indeed, but they managed to get a small two-room-apartment in Topeliuksenkatu (Topelius Street) in the center of Helsinki. Queen Louise of Sweden paid Anna a small pension until Anna's death in July 20th 1964. Her loyal friend and caretaker Vera stayed in the apartment until 1980 and died in 1985.
I work in printing house myself and naturally we have an excellent scanner there. But the day I decided to finally scan the negatives, I noticed it made some nasty stripes throughout the pictures. So if some of you were wondering about the odd stripes in Anna's pictures, that's the explanation. When we get the scanner fixed, I can post you better quality ones.
Sarushka, I would love to help you with the picture, but sorry, I don't know more about it. But thank you so much for the link to Anna's albums online!!! I didn't know such site existed. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the evening browsing them...
