Meeting and Photographing Picture Post's Bert Hardy -- Researched & Written by David Joseph Marcou.
Among my 81 books so far and numerous essays on many subjects I've authored about a half dozen books about Picture Post and Bert Hardy, that magazine's lead-photographer.
My meeting and photographing Bert Hardy in November 1981, around the time of my 31st birthday (just two years after I'd taken up photography decently), was so influential to my future works, that I didn't just write one story and forget about that meeting, but I wrote extensively about it. Eventually, an archival print of my best photo-portrait of Bert Hardy and his dogs Lizzie and Kim, was even added to the Photographs Collection of the British National Portrait Gallery, where it resides today.
I'd been a member of the Missouri-London Reporting Program that semester (Autumn 1981), with John H. Whale and Ernest Morgan our program moderators (JHW was our London instructor and editor). Mr. Whale's day job was working for the Sunday Times of London in many editorial capacities, and our group's office was on the top floor of the Sunday Times building at 200 Grays Inn Road. Mr. Whale's office was on a lower floor of that same building.
Sally Soames, an ST photojournalist, learned I was at least as interested in photography as I was in my semester's writing projects, and gave me the address of a black-and-white photo-printer she said was the best in the world, Grove Hardy Ltd. I went about my semester using a neighborhood printer instead, Prem Olsen. I covered many subjects with my writings, including 50 IRA relatives' meeting with the Cardinal of England Basil Hume at Westminster Catholic Cathedral, with one woman telling the Cardinal what he could do with his read-statement as she stormed out.
Covering 7 or 8 stories, I was still 4 or 5 stories short of my requirement (12, which I'd not reach then, thus my poor grades that semester). Near end of semester, Prem suggested I contact a photojournalist who'd taken good photos and who had good stories to tell about those photos. I obtained his phone number and arranged an interview. The photojournalist's name was Hardy, as it turned out the Hardy in Grove Hardy, so I talked with Sally again, and she said "Mr. Hardy is a very nice man."
I was instructed by the Hardys to take the train from the Elephant & Castle Station to Oxted in Surrey. The Elephant & Castle District was Bert's birth district, where he'd grown up in neo-Dickensian fashion in the 19-and-teens, in a rough and tumble world.
It took 38 minutes to arrive at Oxted by that train, and Bert was waiting for me to drive me to his 300-year-old farmstead, where Mrs. Hardy met us at the gate. The first interview was intriguing, with mentions of many famous people Bert had photographed, but also discussion of his photographing everyday places and people too, including his beloved Elephant & Castle, the street urchins of Glasgow, Betty Burden (the post-war Birmingham shop-girl in "Millions Like Her"), World War II, the Korean War; and the Family of Man.
We also discussed the Queen's wedding of 1947, where Bert took some fairly good photos too, though he was at least as interested in telling me about how the all-day-position-locked-in photographers relieved themselves during the coverage (into thermos bottles). He also mentioned his advertising work, because after Picture Post closed in 1957, Bert opened his own advertising photo business, and was very successful with that too for a few years, before he got the bug to farm, and bought one with his second wife, Sheila.
When I mentioned I'd like to photograph Bert, I was told we'd need to schedule another meeting a couple of days' later, which we did, and I was driven back to Oxted for the train.
When I returned for those photos, I photographed not only Bert and his dogs, but Bert seated by his living room window, as well as Mrs. Hardy, plus a man from the Rank Company, who stopped in for a minute to say hello. However, the woman I married in 1986 (later divorced), absconded with many of my negatives from that 1981 shoot in 1987, though I'd first sent a few small prints to the Hardys.
Before I left my second interview with the Hardys, I was told I must also interview a mystery man of sorts, Mr. Hardy's Korean War writing partner, James Cameron. I did several days' later, but was not allowed to take his picture. However, James Cameron put Bert's Korean War photography into better context, especially regarding their coverages at Pusan (where the UN side was apparently executing political prisoners) and Inchon (the key turning point for the South Korean/UN side in that war; Hardy and Cameron's coverage at Inchon was the only significant word-photo coverage of the first day's attack, and won the Missouri Pictures of the Year Award).
James suggested to me what he'd write about elsewhere, regarding how a photojournalist must stick his or her neck out to get their photos, while a writer can stay in back, then head home to his/her typewriter to compose his or her story more safely.
I've written in great detail and been published so many times about Bert's (and James's) coverages, including in my booklet "Crucial Collaborations", my dual biography of those two great journalists; in my complete history of Picture Post, "All the Best"; and in my biography of Bert Hardy, "The Cockney Eye", that readers interested in further specifics of the lives of Bert Hardy and James Cameron as chronicled by me, will either have to wait for more installments here, or search paper libraries and websites for what I've already published on those topics. Of course, many other writers have authored accounts of their lives too (including Bert and James themselves), but I've long felt a decent ability to cover their lives, due to meeting them in 1981 in their homes, as I did.
Regarding Bert's "weaknesses", I need to add that Bert loved the ladies, and saw quite a few of them on his many travels, which likely had something to do with the breakup of his marriage to Dora, his two sons' mom. Also, since he often had to do several photo-essays each week for Picture Post, he set up a lot of his photos. His photographic and human dexterity though, made nearly all his photos look very naturally arrived at, part of his true genius given the magazine's work conditions.
One other item: The first 18 BH photos I expressed interest in receiving prints of to illustrate my future writings about our interviews, were printed by Grove Hardy; I received them a few days' after my interviews with Bert. In subsequent years, I've received additional prints of Bert's photos, and also many of my own photos over the years were printed by his darkroom too. I believe the Bert Hardy Darkroom (as it was later named) went out of business circa 2009, and Charlie Keeble, it's final manager, passed away a couple years ago. Mr. Hardy had passed in 1995, and many memorials still exist today to his name and works. (Sheila Hardy and Charlie Keeble were also old Picture Post hands, who learned picture research and darkroom skills on that great picture magazine, published from 1938 to 1957.)
