Our first photobook, Missing Buildings, seeks to preserve the physical and psychological landscapes of the Second World War in London.
Over a million of London’s buildings were destroyed or damaged by bombing between 1940 and 1945. From the mysterious gap in a suburban terrace, to the incongruous post-war inner city estate, London is a vast archeological site, bearing the visible scars of its violent wartime past. But this work is not a simple record of bombsites; to our generation, the war is the distant story of an epic battle, passed down to them through books, images, and grandparents’ memories. Blurring fact and fiction, our book searches for this mythology, revealing strange apparitions of the past as they resurface in the architecture of the modern-day city. For us, Missing Buildings contemplates the effects of war upon the British psyche and suggests that the power wrought on our imaginations by the Blitz is a legacy as profound as the physical damage it caused.
— Thom and Beth Atkinson, Kent & London, England
