Now this is interesting. No time to look into it at the moment. The photograph at the top is a Bert Hardy, taken during WWII and discovered by myself on the BBC News website last night. I really liked it and downloaded it. Today I got some books from the LCC library, including Bert Hardy’s autobiography, My Life. On p.19 of my copy is the photograph underneath. Hardy as I’m discovering was a serial fraud. More soon.
2 comments:
Apparently he was from quite a well off background and alot of his pictures of maids and servants were taken in his own family house. It's a shame to see that even some of the greats set up pictures for their editors, it happened then and it happens now. It's a slippery slope in my mind and undermines the integrity of documentary photography. Then again most of the public think we're all Pap's.
Hi Mark,
Posting as a guest from my mobile phone on the M25. Rest assured it's not me driving.
On the contrary, Bert came from impoverished beginnings in Elephant & Castle of all places, which is why I'm particulalrly intersted in him (the antithesis of the likes of Cartier-Bresson etc). Maybe you can forgive this one as it was WWII, propaganda etc.
Interestingly, my dad, who was about the same age as these boys at the time, loves both pictures for reasons of notalgia and doesn't give a hoot about the picture eronious nature. He likes the bottom one best, because of the bombsite. I asked him how he knew it wasa really a bomb site :)
Hardy was at heart a good man, who was also very brave, was almost entirely self-taught and who took some remarkable photographs. He made up stories for Picture Post fot money, which when you've been raised six in a bed in one room is understandable.
The devil drives, although hopefully not on the M25.
Cheers!
Sco
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