Delivery After Raid

Delivery After Raid is a black-and-white photograph taken in London the day after the night air raid of 8-9 October 1940, during the 32nd consecutive night of the Blitz of World War II. It shows the remains of a street in Holborn, Central London, after it was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. A figure dressed as a milkman appears in the foreground, seemingly calm and unperturbed on his usual route, while firefighters in the background work among the smouldering ruins.

The image was staged by press photographer Fred Morley using his assistant who dressed as the deliveryman. The constructed photo accentuates what became known as the "Blitz Spirit", the courage and morale of the British people in spite of the bombings, allowing Morley to bypass military censorship and reveal the actual devastation of the city in the background to the wider world, while also promoting positive propaganda. The photograph is one of a series of constructed or manipulated images used to boost morale during the war.

Composition

The photograph depicts the aftermath of a German bombing of a London street in a working-class neighbourhood during the Blitz in World War II. An outline of buildings appears in the background, still standing on the left and right, as the bright sky shines down from the top centre-right to now destroyed buildings.

The street is difficult to see due to the rubble and detritus completely filling it. Fires still smoulder in the upper-left corner, as steam and smoke rise from where the firefighters, shown slightly blurred in the background with their backs to the camera, hold a firehose as they spray down what is left of the now flattened buildings, extinguishing the last of the blaze.

Directly to the right of the firefighters, the milkman appears in the foreground wearing a shining, white jacket, carrying a crate of milk bottles in his right hand, and a single bottle of milk in the right pocket of his jacket. The man strides confidently through the rubble with a bold, determined look on his face, an incongruous image in the midst of the widespread destruction.

The milkman is sharply in focus, with one of his legs blurred by motion, indicating a slow shutter speed used by the photographer. The arm of the milkman is slightly raised, compositionally aligned with the firehose behind him in the background, as broken structural elements strewn to his lower left, possibly a doorframe, point diagonally in the distance behind him, visually reminding us that this was once a road.

Background

The Blitz

The Battle of Britain began in July 1940 as Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe sought air superiority over Britain in a campaign against the Royal Air Force, a prerequisite for a planned invasion of the United Kingdom. Although the Luftwaffe was perceived as one of the most powerful air forces in the world, Fighter Command successfully defended British airspace against German attacks.

During its final stages, the Luftwaffe launched the Blitz, an eight-month bombing campaign against British cities, shifting from daylight and night attacks to almost exclusively night bombing in October. London was attacked for 57 nights, from September 1940 to May 1941, leading to more than 40,000 civilian deaths and leaving over a million homes and buildings damaged or destroyed.

Shortly after the battle began, Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the Minister of Information (MOI) on 26 July 1940 to work with the media to control the way they covered the air raids, specifying that "photographs showing shattered houses should not be published unless there is something very peculiar about them...it must be clear that the vast majority of people are not at all affected by any single air raid...Pray try to impress this upon the newspaper authorities, and persuade them to help."

If the photos were questionable, press agencies often submitted their images to the Press & Censorship Bureau of the MOI for review before publishing. Photography scholar James McArdle notes that the British government wanted to avoid any kind of public panic and tried to limit the number of photos showing the destruction from the bombs by censoring images captured by press photographers. Jane McArthur, whose doctoral research examined World War II photographs that were formerly held by the MOI and later deposited in the Imperial War Museum, found that, of the approximately 11,500 photographs taken by the British press of the London bombing, the majority had never been seen by the public.

Photograph

Photographer Fred Morley of Fox Photos captured the image of Holborn, Central London, on 9 October 1940, in the aftermath of the 32nd consecutive day of bombing raids during the Blitz. St Paul's Cathedral suffered the first of its wartime bombings during this same bombing raid.

Due to wartime censorship rules, it was unlikely that the British government would allow such a photo to be published, as it was believed such images would damage morale. Censors wanted to prevent the Germans from knowing where the bombs had reached their targets. They also believed that such photos had the potential to contribute to public panic and dismay. The only way Morley could get past the censors to document the bombing, writes photography curator Roger Hargreaves, was by creating "a more palatable fiction".

British historian Lucy Worsley notes that Morley decided to use his assistant to portray a milkman walking seemingly unperturbed through the ruins of London. He borrowed a milkman's uniform and accessories and dressed his assistant in the clothes and had him walk through the scene as he captured the photo. "His strategy to get such a picture published", writes McArdle, "was to play on the British 'stiff upper lip' cliché that would appeal to the censors; show that life was going to carry on as normal, a formula he and other press photographers continued to employ".

The censors saw the milkman representing the "Blitz Spirit", the strength and resolve of the British people in the face of great suffering and destruction, and allowed newspapers to publish the photo on October 10. In 2011, British journalist David Hayes stated that the photograph first became widely known when it appeared in the Daily Mirror.

Exhibitions

Delivery After Raid was exhibited several times. It first appeared in the London General exhibition at the Hulton Getty Picture Gallery in 1999. From July to October 2007, the National Portrait Gallery held the Daily Encounters exhibition, which featured Delivery After Raid along with other press photographs from Fleet Street taken from the early 1900s to the 1980s.

Interpretation

American historian David F. Crew believes the image of Delivery After Raid is part of a larger set of British photographs taken during World War II that symbolically represents the steadfast resolve of the British people in the face of an incessant and devastating bombing campaign by Nazi Germany. Crew believes these images informed the stoic myth of the Blitz spirit, helping the British people to survive and emerge triumphant in their battle against Germany.

The photo is often discussed as part of a set of two, three, or more similarly contrived and modified photos from the late 1940 Blitz era. These include several staged images of "postmen" delivering or picking up mail (Mail as Usual, 11 September 1940), a staged image of "insurance assessors" examining the damage of the Holland House library (Damaged Library, 23 October 1940), and a retouched image of an attack on St Paul's Cathedral. (St Paul's Survives, 29–30 December 1940).

All three of the staged photos, Delivery After Raid, Mail as Usual, and Damaged Library, are credited to photographers from the Fox Photos press agency, although a later copy of Damaged Library, which was originally taken by a "Mr. Harrison" for Fox Photos, was also credited to Central Press as they helped distribute a copy of the image to British newspapers. The fourth photo, a modified and retouched St Paul's Survives, was taken by Herbert Mason of the Daily Mail.

Architectural historian Petra Seitz notes that, like many Blitz photographs, the scene of destruction depicted in Delivery After Raid is difficult to identify in the streets of modern London today. The city has transformed over time, writes Seitz, and the passing of the generation who experienced the Blitz has left only photographs to sustain the cultural memory of the war, with the surviving memories reinforcing the myths and forgetting the darker realities of war itself. "Without a clear connection between contemporary and blitztime London", she writes, "it is easy to be swept away by the 'myth of the blitz'".

See also

• Keep Calm and Carry On
• List of photographs considered the most important

Notes and references

Sources