A tearful woman bids farewell to her loved  one at Paddington Station in 1942;  elsewhere, young boys leap over gravestones as they use a Glasgow cemetery as a  post-war playground.

These striking images form part of a  retrospective celebrating the work of renowned photographer Bert Hardy, who  would have been 100 this year.

Hardy, who died in 1995, is best known for  his assignments at Picture Post magazine between 1941 and 1957.

A woman bids farewell at Paddington Station in 1942 as a  train pulls away. This is one of the haunting images taken by Bert Hardy, who is  the subject of a retrospective at the Photographers' Gallery in Soho

A group of boys from the deprived Gorbals district of  Glagow play among the gravestones of the Corporation Burial Ground in  1948

A young boy blowing up a balloon in Gorbals in 1948.  Hardy, who died in 1995, is best known for his assignments at Picture Post  magazine between 1941 and 1957

He covered the London Blitz, D-Day landings  and the liberation of both Paris and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in  Germany.

Now, an exhibition of his work will be shown  at The Photographers' Gallery in Soho, from next Thursday, to coincide with his  centenary.

The pictures on display will focus on  ordinary people going about their daily lives during and after the Second World  War - including the poor district of Gorbals in Glasgow.

Despite this, Hardy managed to capture the  cheeky playfulness of urchins as they made the best of the hand fate had dealt  them.

Men at a social club in Gorbals in 1948. Often referred  to as Europe's worst slum, Gorbals was filled with low-quality housing and  street gangs were rife

 

 

Children in the run-down Gorbals area take to the  streets. The tenements there were built quickly and cheaply in the  1840s

Youngsters enjoy a kickabout in Glasgow in 1948. Bert  Hardy himself came from a working-class family and was the eldest of seven  children

Following his work as a laboratory assistant for a  photographic agency, Hardy (above) was hired as a staff photographer at the  Picture Post in the 1940s

One of his photos shows a group of  children  playing by a lamppost, while another shows youngsters having a  kickaround in  the shadow of cheap tenements.

The exhibition works include Gorbals  Boys  (1948), Maidens In Waiting (1951), Life Of An East End Parson  (1940), Grand  Hotel Torquay (1947) and Holiday Camp Yorkshire (1953).

Born in London to a working-class family in  May 1913, Hardy was the eldest of seven children.

After leaving school at the age of 14, he got  a job as a messenger, which saw him collecting and delivering film and prints  for West End chemists.

Bitten by the photography bug, he bought his  first camera for 50p from a pawn shop and had his first big break when he  snapped King George V and Queen Mary passing by in a carriage down Blackfriars  Road.

The enterprising youngster printed off 200  postcards and sold them to friends and neighbours.

Following his work as a laboratory  assistant  for a photographic agency, he was hired as a staff  photographer at the Picture  Post in the 1940s.

There, he used his trusted Leica to  capture  the slums of London and Glasgow (including the gritty Gorbals  neighbourhood),  as well as assignments during World War Two and Korea.

He died aged 82.

His widow, Sheila, has granted access to  images and limited-edition prints that have not been widely seen.

The  exhibition runs from April 4 to May 23.

A second-hand clothes shop in Gorbals, captured by Hardy  on his trusted Leica

 

Mrs Lundy at her junk shop in Bedford Street in Gorbals;  right, An East End parson with a child among the bombed ruins of  London

Smiling children run along behind a parson in the East  End during the Blitz

Two boys with their dogs in Gorbals in a street rife  with graffiti in 1948