Museum of London celebrates London nights with exhibition about the city after dark

A new exhibition will shed light on London after dark with hundreds of photographs of city life at night going on show.

Curator Anna Sparham said the Museum of London wanted to look at the “darker, more uncomfortable” side of the capital as well as the bright lights of the West End.

More than 200 photographs, dating from the present day back to the 19th century, will be brought together for the London Nights exhibition next year.

Ms Sparham said she wanted to present a “real mixture of the familiar and the unexpected” with images of suburbia and night workers included as well as revellers in central London.

She said: “As the sun sets over London each night the mood changes as people head home, to work or off out on the town. Through powerful photography London Nights will explore everything from the twinkling lights and buzzing nightlife to the darker, more uncomfortable vulnerability that sometimes arises in the urban, or suburban night environment.”

Among the images going on show are pictures of Buckingham Palace and Leicester Square alongside a photograph of homeless men gathered in a night shelter at Blackfriars in the years before World War One.

Also included are photographs taken during the blackout at the height of the Blitz and pictures of commuters heading home after work.

:: London Nights is at the Museum of London from May 11 to November 11.