City streets,  Monochrome Madness,  Photographic techniques,  Themed galleries

Gallery: seeing streetlights in black and white

May 15, 2025 / 40 Comments

I had the mortification one fine morning of finding you on my track and in several particulars ahead of me – but now I think I have shot ahead of you and yet I feel there is almost an infinity of detail to be wrought out in the large application now awaiting development and that your inventive genius as well as my own will find very ample room for exercise in carrying out this gigantic work that awaits execution.

Joseph Swan in a letter to Thomas Edison, 24 September 1880

Those of us living in towns and cities take our streetlights for granted. But of course, they haven’t always been there, and earlier models were gas lights, needing to be lit each evening by a lamplighter. In 1880, Mosley Street in Newcastle-upon-Tyne became the first public road in the world to be lit by electric incandescent light bulbs, thanks to local inventor Joseph Swan. And Newcastle went on to become one of the first towns to be fully lit by electricity.

Mosley Street in 1912 (Newcastle City Libraries, public domain)

Swan was the first to start creating the lightbulb, but the perhaps more famous Thomas Edison was the first to commercialise them. Eventually they were to join forces, creating the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company in 1883. And by the way, early photographers also owe Swan a debt, as he developed and marketed dry photographic plates in 1877 and bromide paper in 1879. 

Joseph Swan plaque on Mosley Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Photographing streetlights

I seem to have a ridiculous number of streetlight photos! And their varied and interesting shapes and designs lend themselves to black and white photography. So I was happy to see that Brian had chosen this as a theme for this week’s Monochrome Madness.

I find it surprising how many variations are possible in the design of something so relatively simple and everyday! I’m always especially taken by designs that reflect the location of the light, such as the examples below from Chinatowns in Newcastle and Liverpool, the ammonite feature on the lamps from Lyme Regis (famous for its fossils) and the palm tree designs in Abu Dhabi.

I’ll start with a few images from close to home in London, plus a couple from Newcastle (although neither of them taken on Mosley Street). I’ve also included some from elsewhere in the UK here.

Hover over each image to see where the photo was taken (likewise for all these galleries).

The beautiful old cities of Europe are a rich hunting ground. My feature photo was taken in Riga, Latvia.

And further afield in the world there is perhaps even more variety.

Perhaps surprisingly, I take fewer photos of streetlights at night. However I did find a few in my archives to round off this post, including again a couple from Newcastle. So we end where we began, in the birthplace of the streetlight!

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