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Anorak News | London World War 2: Bill Brandt’s brilliant photos of Underground shelters

London World War 2: Bill Brandt’s brilliant photos of Underground shelters

by | 9th, September 2015

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Not long after the Blitz began the Ministry of Information commissioned Bill Brandt to photograph the air-raid shelters. The pictures were sent to Washington in an attempt to bring America into the war.

Cyril Connolly published Brandt’s shelter photographs in Horizon in February 1942. In 1966 Connolly wrote that ‘”Elephant and Castle 3.45 a.m.” eternalises for me the dreamlike monotony of wartime London.’ Brandt himself recalled ‘the long alley of intermingled bodies, with the hot, smelly air and continual murmur of snores’.

See them all: Bill Brandt’s Underground Shelter Photographs from November 1940



Posted: 9th, September 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink