Even though the photographs were only published in book-form some fifty years after they were taken, the Charing Cross Road series is among Suschitzky’s best known works. Hailing from a family of booksellers and publishers himself, Suschitzky took his photographs of London’s “street of books” in the mid-1930s.
“When I first came to London, I was fascinated to see whole streets devoted to a specific trade; there was Fleet Street with its news offices and printing shops; in another street, Hatton Gardens, the jewellers had their shops. Charing Cross Road was full of bookshops. Each shop also offered books, mostly second-hand fare, outside, and there were always passers-by browsing through the tomes. That gave me the idea of making a book about the street and the neighbouring nightlife district of Soho.”
A bookshop with a claim to fame is Marks & Co, at number 84, outside which Suschitzky set up his camera in 1937 – the shop sign is visible in the left of the picture. Years later, the booksellers there were to carry on a correspondence with a New York client, Helene Hanff, which was published as a book, play and film; incidentally, the photographer recalls, the famous London fog could not be attributed to the British climate but was caused by heating private homes.
Neither does Suschitzky fail to see what goes on in the streets and alleys away from the urban bustle. He photographs children playing in a dreary backyard, road-menders, a milkman pushing his cart through the rain or collecting money from his customers, and a knife grinder in his open-air workplace. “Many years after I had taken this picture, I had a letter from Canada. The writer had seen this picture in my little book Charing Cross Road in the Thirties and had recognized the knife sharpener as her father. She requested a print, which I sent with pleasure.” The photograph of a girl jumping over a puddle reflecting the lights of the street at night has become the most famous of the series.