London Night by Harold Burdekin is a photographic study of London’s nocturnal landscape, created during the early 1930s in collaboration with John Morrison, whose accompanying essay provides contextual and literary depth. Published in 1934, at a time when night photography was still emerging as a discipline, the project draws from earlier influences such as Brassaï’s Paris by Night (1932). The photographs depict fog-shrouded streets and iconic landmarks, capturing a vision of London before the Blitz, urban redevelopment, and air quality improvements significantly altered the city’s character.
The images portray a London shaped by its industrial identity, with smoke and fog intertwining to create an atmosphere of mystery and solitude. Burdekin’s deliberate exclusion of people from his frames enhances the architectural focus and fosters a sense of isolation. The images, filled with the heavy fog mingling with coal smoke, capture a city full of hidden stories and echoing memories. In doing so, Burdekin and Morrison crafted a visual and literary ode to London, imbuing the urban night with a sense of romance and intrigue that resonates deeply with the viewer.
The artistic vision behind London Night centers on themes of mystery, urban solitude, and the interplay between light and darkness. Morrison’s essay supports Burdekin’s images by poetically exploring the philosophical notion that night is not merely the absence of day but a realm of its own, rich with subtleties, fantasies, and contradictions. The photographs and text work in tandem to romanticize London’s old streets, parks, and riverbanks, portraying them as ethereal and enigmatic under the cover of night.
Aesthetically, Burdekin’s images are characterized by the use of fog and low lighting to create depth and ambiguity. Meticulously composed scenes highlight iconic landmarks like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Exchange, rendered as spectral silhouettes under gaslight. The blue photogravure printing process enhances the photographs’ dreamlike quality, imbuing them with a cool, somber tone that reinforces the sense of a city suspended in time.
Technically, Burdekin’s mastery is evident in his ability to navigate the challenges of night photography, employing long exposures to capture near-darkness with clarity and precision. The photogravure process introduced a unique tonal richness, enhancing the atmospheric qualities of his work and expanding the creative possibilities of low-light photography in its era.
Initially little seen, London Night entered public view through Burdekin’s first-prize photograph “Race Against Time” in the Morning Post competition (1930), later used as the book’s opening plate. His death in 1944 truncated further development and left the field to contemporaries such as Bill Brandt, whose A Night in London (1938) shaped postwar discourse. Renewed attention—through holdings at institutions like the Bishopsgate Institute and periodic displays—has reframed the book as a crucial pre-Blitz record and an early benchmark of British night photography, attentive to fog, gaslight, and architectural solitude.
