Bert Hardy: Exercises with Photography and Film
Nead, L. and Wyver, J. 2020. Bert Hardy: Exercises with Photography and Film. British Art Studies. 15. https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-15/nead-wyver
| Title | Bert Hardy: Exercises with Photography and Film |
|---|---|
| Type | Journal article |
| Authors | Nead, L. and Wyver, J. |
| Abstract | The two short films and essay published here come out of a collaborative research project on the aesthetic and historical qualities of Bert Hardy’s wartime and post-war photography for Picture Post. Developing the methodologies being explored in the field of videographic criticism, we use moving images to produce a visual exploration of the material and formal qualities of Bert Hardy’s photographs in the 1940s. Digital moving images and sound, we suggest, expand our potential understanding and analysis of Hardy’s work, in ways in which traditional written modes of criticism cannot. We use the poetic and expressive possibilities of our medium to highlight and examine those material qualities, along with the historical atmosphere of post-war visual media. The two films each explore a particular Hardy photo-story: Fire-Fighters! focuses on the themes of grain in the printed image, the facial close-up as an affective form of national expression, narrative sequence, and the move in the story from figuration to abstraction. The second film, Life in the Elephant develops the concept of narrative and photographic sequence and facial/emotional expression. It also considers the ways in which the photo-story expresses a sense of historical place. The accompanying article develops the historical contexts for the two photo-stories, the theoretical ideas motivating the project, and the technical processes and collaborative partnerships involved in making the films. |
| Keywords | Bert Hardy |
| photography | |
| World War Two | |
| Picture Post | |
| videographic criticism | |
| Journal | British Art Studies |
| Journal citation | 15 |
| ISSN | 2058-5462 |
| Year | 2020 |
| Publisher | Paul Mellon Centre |
| Publisher's version | License CC BY-NC 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-15/nead-wyver |
| Web address (URL) | https://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-15/exercises-with-photography-and-film |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 27 Feb 2020 |