Photo essay: British photographers Thom and Beth Atkinson have created a series of images showing sites across London where traces of second world war bomb damage are still visible over 75 years later.
Described by the pair as "a strange kind of archeology", the series reveals a mix of empty spaces and piecemeal development on sites bombed by Nazi Germany during the Blitz between 1940 and 1941.
The resulting photographs are presented in the book Missing Buildings, recently published by Hwæt Books. Photographer Jim Stephenson spoke to Thom Atkinson about the project.

On 7 September 1940, the first bombs of the Blitz fell across London, killing 448 people. These intensive raids continued for just over eight months both in London and across the UK. In London alone, almost 20,000 civilians died and up to one million homes were destroyed or seriously damaged ? huge portions of the housing stock, including up to 80 per cent in the borough of Tower Hamlets.

The preface to a John Piper article in the Architectural Review from 1941 suggested that "when it is all over, a few of the wrecked building might well be left as permanent ruins? To posterity they will as effectually represent the dissolution of our pre-war civilisation as Fountains Abbey does the dissolution of the monasteries."
The people that were there to witness it won't be around for much longer
Although the wrecked buildings have largely been bulldozed and built over, and despite h...