In the UK, one of the first photographers to use a Leica was Bert Hardy (though this picture was made with a Box brownie.) Working for a film processing company he had two interests that filled much of his spare hours, photography and bicycling, and had combined the two by photographing various cycle races.

A story he would always tell when asked how he became a photographer was that some friends of his decided as a joke to tell him that one of the large Picture Agencies in London was looking for 'miniature' photographers. Hardy went along with a pile of his cycling prints to see the manager and said that he was taking pictures with a Leica. 'That's not real photography' he was told, 'take a look at these', and he was shown a set of technically fine, but static and dull prints. After a while, the manager said that he might as well have a look at Bert's work since he had brought it. As he leafed through the pile of prints, his expression changed, and although he didn't take any of the work that the photographer had brought in, he sent him on his first photographic job, to take a portrait of a visiting Hungarian musician.

Hardy went to the hotel with his Leica and an single light and took a series of pictures that presented his subject naturally as a personality rather than the kind of posed formal portraits that were more normal at the time.

This was the start of a career that was later to make Bert Hardy famous as one of the leading photographers for the UK picture magazine, Picture Post , for which he took most of his best known pictures . His coverage of the Blitz in the early years of the war epitomised the conditions of the time and the spirit of the British people. 'Picture Post' even published the photographer's name with the work - previously features had been credited only to the magazine. Later he was called up into the army and worked as a photographer in the British Army PR department; after the invasion he too followed the path of liberation, recording the entry into Paris the crossing of the Rhine and the concentration camps before the war ended and he was able to go back to a job with 'Picture Post', again capturing the mood of post-war Britain.

Both Hoppé and Edward Steichen moved away from pictorialism and both turned commercial . Hoppé's mastery of the new European modernism in photography was perhaps deeper in such works as his 'Crane Land' (1926) which frames one of London's docks through a complex mesh of wires and rods of foreground cranes. Another interesting series was made from the top of a London bus - probably the first of projects of this type.

Hoppé became a photojournalist in the 1930s, travelling Europe and the World, although possibly his best known work is in his several books on London, including 'The Image of London' (1935) and 'A Camera on Unknown London' (1936). He also produced two books and the USA in the 1920s, one on Germany in 1930, 'Round the World with a Camera', (1934), several books of portraits and his autobiography 'Hundred Thousand Exposures: The Success of a Photographer' (1945) which remains an interesting read. It combines a great deal of advice - much of which is still apposite - including the advice 'economy in films is unwise' - and some interesting anecdotes, although sometimes its style grates.

Recently, a retrospective exhibition of his work has been discovered in a commercial picture library, and it will be shown again in London in 2003 . No doubt this will make his work more widely appreciated.

Hoppé, so far I know, never took a war photograph (though he felt very much in danger when he photographed Mussolini,) but was one of the pioneers of the 'miniature' cameras, taking his Leica, Contax and Super Ikonta around the world to photograph. His story is one which I hope to return to in greater length in another feature.

This is cache, read story here