“Everywhere I look, and most of the time I look,” Bert Hardy said, “I see photographs.” His 28-year career attests to it. In 1935, Hardy made a name for himself at just 23, when he photographed King George V and Queen Mary passing in their carriage during the Silver Jubilee celebrations. That snapshot, which sold 200 copies, pulled him out of poverty and marked the beginning of his life as a photojournalist.
In the early 1940s, Hardy was hired by Tom Hopkinson, editor of the influential Picture Post. For Hopkinson he chronicled the mass disruption of W.W. II—in Cardiff, Liverpool, Belfast, and Glasgow. In 1942, the magazine asked him to photograph Chinese seamen on Royal Navy ships in Liverpool, who, despite having lived in the country for decades, were paid less than their British counterparts. Hardy documented the seamen plotting what would become a strike of 10,000 across Chinatown’s rough hostels and boardinghouses.
When the war ended, Hardy set his sights on poignant portraits of British life at all levels. With his customary grace, he moved from the rat-infested Gorbals tenements in Glasgow to the forgotten immigrants of Tiger Bay, to close-ups of Marlene Dietrich in elegant hotel lobbies. In 1947, he captured the surging excitement of Princess Elizabeth’s Westminster wedding, shooting the future queen and her bridesmaids from a unique overhead angle.
Hardy didn’t stay in Europe for long. In the 1950s, he traveled to Asia to chronicle the Korean War, then returned for the Vietnam War after that. “[He was] the nearest to an all-round cameraman I ever worked with,” Hopkinson once said. “There were few assignments—except perhaps for theater and ballet—on which I wouldn’t have wished to send him.”
In 1964, Hardy retired to his Oxted farm. He died in 1995, at the age of 82. A new exhibition at London’s Photographers’ Gallery presents black-and-white photographs that highlight his extraordinary versatility. Scenes of wrestling matches, cycle polo, and British stoicism during the Blitz await. —Elena Clavarino
“Bert Hardy: Photojournalism in War and Peace” will be on display at the Photographers’ Gallery, in London, until June 2
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL
