Book Description
Down the Bay is a study of photographs taken in 1950 by Bert Hardy, the legendary Picture Post photographer. Taken in the Tiger Bay community in Cardiff, these photographs are one of the first serious attempts to provide a sympathetic portrait free of negative and romantic stereotypes of everyday life in multi-ethnic Britain. The images are strong, beautiful and empathetic: the wrinkled face of an old West Indian man, who immigrated to Britain in the 1800s, stares into distance; an Arab man in a fur cap stops his bicycle to chat with a woman in the neighbourhood square; men and women jitterbug in a local church hall, seemingly oblivious to differences of race; a father lovingly wipes his little daughters chin; two boys throw stones into the canal while three young girls run along the bank; a group of men engage in illegal gambling on the street corner as one of them spots the photographer; an old man pays a visit to his ill friend; three young boys shoot marbles in the street; four well-groomed Somalis in suits and ties sit drinking coffee or tea; and so on. These photographs invite comparison with other humanist photographers of working class life in the city, such as Robert Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson. Down the Bay includes essays by Glenn Jordan and Professor Stuart Hall and a contribution by Magnum photographer David Hurn. The essays explore Bert Hardys photographs of Tiger Bay, and the photographic practice of
Picture Post magazine (1938-1957), in relation to issues of realism, humanism and British documentary.
About the Author
BERT HARDY was Chief Photographer at
Picture Post magazine for a number of years during the 1940s and 50s. He began his photographic career as a boy assistant in the darkroom of a chemist shop and was largely self-taught. Most of his work is in the humanist documentary tradition, although he also worked briefly in advertising. His most powerful images are of everyday life in the poor areas of various British cities, including Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool and London, and of war and its aftermath. In April 1945 he travelled with the Allied troops to Belsen and took the most horrifying pictures of his career. Five years later, covering the Korean War with James Cameron, he took photographs of under-fed and ill-treated political prisoners in South Korea. GLENN JORDAN is Director of Butetown History & Arts Centre in Cardiff and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Photography at the University of Glamorgan. Educated at Stanford University and the University of Illinois, he is author of
Tramp Steamers, Seamen & Sailor Town: Jack Sullivan's Paintings of Old Cardiff Docklands (2002) and co-author of
Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World (1995) and
Fractured Horizon: A Landscape of Memory (2003). He is currently writing a book entitled
Cultural Studies and Photography: the Subject, the City, the Other.