Art from Fleet Streets Finest
Bert Hardy , photographer .
Basement Blues , Life in the Elephant 8th January 1949
The work of Bert Hardy stretches forty years from 1936 to 1964 when he retired from photography to his farm in Oxted, Surrey.
His work is a record of ordinary life, lived by so many but rarely recorded . His photographs of poverty in Glasgows' Gorbals, in Liverpool and in London for the Picture Post are compelling.
The characters in the pictures invariably with a cigarette dangling from the bottom lip bear close examination.
The black and white images viewed now appear as if from a foreign land and alien to the way we are . How can it be that life just a generation ago looked so different from today?
Whether he was photographing poverty, Korean political prisoners or Hollywood stars it was always with respect.
But we may have never have had this remarkable archive of life if the young Albert Hardy had been able to multiply 13 by 13.
The first interview that he attended after leaving school was with a local garage where the owner asked the would be mechanic the tricky question.
The failure to come up with the right answer forced him to look elsewhere and a second interivew,this time with a local chemist who needed a 'lad ' was more succesful.
The chemist processed film and an interest in photography was formented and a career was born.
In 1936 he had some early success with a carriage shot of the of the King and Queen during a parade for their Silver Jubilee, taken on a plate camera that was balanced on the head of his smaller sister.
He printed two hundred 6x4 prints which he sold locally for 6d (2 1/2p)each ,encouraged by this he went to work for a a local photographic agency as a photographic printer and then enticed by the prospect of earning more money ,soon took the next step as a photographer.
More success followed and he found that much of the work he was producing was being published in the hugely popular magazine ,Picture Post.
In 1941 he sought and acquired a job at the Picture Post under the Editorship of Tom Hopkinson. Hardys documentary style photography led to many assignments, delving into the lives of the working class whose trust he gained enabling him to work closely with them.
Born in Southwark, South London, to a working class family and the eldest of seven children his affinity with the poor was well grounded .
Some of his succes could be attributed to his preference of using a Leica camera , a compact 35mm camera that was less intrusive than the large format cameras used by Hardys contempories.
In July 1951 he took what might be considered to be one of his most famous photos of two women sitting on the railings on the promenade at Blackpool using a single focus box brownie as a challenge to prove that the equipmentwas not the most important asset for a photographer..
In 1942 he joined the Army photography unit and was at the beach landings on D Day, and in Paris for the liberation and as the allies moved towards Berlin was among the first photographers to arrive at Belsen. Towards the end of the war Hardy was posted to the far East where he became Lord Louis Mountbattens personal photographer .
When the Army no longer required his talents he returned to the Picture Post and pursued many more gritty stories. In 1949 the Picture Post published a set of pictures documenting Life in the Elephant,a powerful observation of post war Britain.
He relates that he and the reporter Bert Lloyd “walked around, and I did a few shots, nothing that meant anything, but sort of using the camera.''
Returning each day looking for a lead they were approached by a woman who asked Hardy to take her photo .On discovery of their mission she became their guide to the Elephant takiing the two Picture Post men on a tour of the places and people .Hardy says in his autobiography 'My Life ' “After that,” Hardy says “it was just smooth; it went so smooth, it was unbelievable.”
1950 saw a trip to Korea with reporter James Cameron . The trip had far ranging consequences . The story that Cameron and Hardy brought back was about the abuse of Korean prisoners by South Koreans under UN supervision. Edward Hulton , the owner of Picture Post was reluctant to publish the story but the Editor Hopkinson insisted and published the story leading to Hopkinsons sacking.
Hardy contniued to work for the Post but the style changed under a new editor and its campaingning style became less on the edge and led to the ultimate demise as readers fell away lured by alternative entertainments such as Television. The Picture Post ceased publishing in 1957.
Bert Hardy turned to advertsising and claimed that it was during this time he made enough money to buy the farm to which he later retired .His interest in photography ,however , continued and he did talks and exhbitions thoughout his retirment.In his book he said , ''Everywhere I look, and most of the time I do look , I see photographs''
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