“There’ll Always be an England!”: Vintage works by Bert Hardy with works by Bill Brandt, Martin Parr, Brian Seed and others

London-born Bert Hardy, still largely unknown in America, was one of the great documentary photographers of the 20th century. For decades his works dominated the pages of the Picture Post, England’s answer to Life magazine. He photographed children, war, sports and most other human endeavors with an enthusiasm and directness that to this day give his pictures an arresting immediacy. This exhibition of Hardy’s handsome vintage silver prints is drawn mostly from the 1940s and 1950s and offers a freshly observed sense of life in London and the United Kingdom during that turbulent and exciting era. His own favorite photograph was of two young street urchins in the Glasgow slum called the Gorbals, as he identified with their defiant exuberance. As is stated on the cover of his illustrated biography,
“You will not forget Bert Hardy!”
Also on display will be photographs by Bill Brandt, Brian Seed, Martin Parr and several others, all documenting life in the United Kingdom ( and occasionally beyond).
Spanning seven decades, the exhibition runs the gamut from stark reality to poignant reflection and further on to delicious absurdity. “There’ll Always be an England,” is a pleasure cruise of cultural history in the form of some of the finest photographs of people and their human predicaments that we could find on this side of the Atlantic.