Speaker 1: Its match day at London's Wembley Stadium sometime in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, photographer High Money clutches an oversized camera in
Speaker 1: one hand and her media pass in the other. As
Speaker 1: she approaches the entrance to the press area, High presents
Speaker 1: her pass to the security guard. Is there no where
Speaker 1: you women don't want to stick your noses in? In contrast,
Speaker 1: High Money was softly spoken and exceedingly polite. She'd been
Speaker 1: sent by a local newspaper to photograph the England match.
Speaker 1: Male journalists that high had worked with for years walked
Speaker 1: past her, avoiding her pleading gaze. If only someone would
Speaker 1: vouch for her, but previous experience had made it clear
Speaker 1: that asking anyone for help would be useless. The security
Speaker 1: guard stood firm sneering down at her, refusing her entry.
Speaker 1: Over my dead body mate, Hi gave one look at
Speaker 1: the press area bustling with journalists before turning away. She
Speaker 1: knew that rightfully she should be in there with them,
Speaker 1: getting ready to cover the upcoming game. Bus As England's
Speaker 1: first female sports photographer, High Money was unfortunately becoming used
Speaker 1: to this type of treatment. Hey, it's Tony Armstrong. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the poor room. Where we celebrate the winners, losers
Speaker 1: and the weird stuff. Between listening to High Money softly spoken,
Speaker 1: polite British accent, it could be easy to underestimate her
Speaker 1: to be a big mistake. Although arguably still underappreciated, She's
Speaker 1: a towering presence in the history of sports photography in
Speaker 1: the UK, and it took an extraordinary amount of willpower
Speaker 1: to get where she is. Let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: High Money was born in Bangalore, India, where at the
Speaker 1: age of eight she was sent to an elite military
Speaker 1: boarding school. The students were taught a British curriculum and
Speaker 1: trained in rifle, shooting and marching. The school's motto was
Speaker 1: never given, was she seemed to have taken to heart.
Speaker 1: At nineteen, Hyde decided to leave India and moved to England.
Speaker 1: As a parting gift, her mother, a royalist, gave her
Speaker 1: a present, her first ever camera, and made her promise
Speaker 1: to take photos of the royal family with it. This
Speaker 1: gift was to start a lifelong love of photography, although
Speaker 1: her subject matter ended up being a little different than
Speaker 1: either she or her mother could have guessed at the time.
Speaker 1: Once in London, High married had four children and settled
Speaker 1: into being a housewife. And then, on her son's seventh birthday,
Speaker 1: she asked him what he wanted to do to celebrate.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go to the palace. Why do you
Speaker 1: want to go to the palace, she asked, had her
Speaker 1: son somehow inherited her mother's love for the British royal family. No,
Speaker 1: her son explained, not Buckingham Palace, Crystal Palace. He wanted
Speaker 1: to see his favorite football team play at Selhurst Park.
Speaker 1: Hi agreed to take him, despite never being interested in
Speaker 1: the game herself. Her husband was the football tragic of
Speaker 1: the family. But that visit with her son ended up
Speaker 1: opening her eyes to what I would later describe as
Speaker 1: the beauty and the magic of football. Everywhere she looked,
Speaker 1: she saw a potential photograph, the families, the food vendors,
Speaker 1: and the goalkeeper rising above all the other players to
Speaker 1: save a goal like some sort of mythical being. Then
Speaker 1: and there, she resolved to return with her camera to
Speaker 1: capture these images. But it was putting this plan into
Speaker 1: action that she experienced her first taste of the sexism
Speaker 1: that was to come. Racism, sexism, and prejudice are still
Speaker 1: rife in football. And in the seventies it was even worse. Unbelievably,
Speaker 1: the Football Association banned women from playing in nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: with the justification that the game of football is quite
Speaker 1: unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen seventy one, when a Revel team represented
Speaker 1: England in an unofficial World Cup in Mexico, that the
Speaker 1: process of lifting the band started to come into force. However,
Speaker 1: the misogyny those early female players faced is astounding to
Speaker 1: hear about. It still took twenty more years before FIFA
Speaker 1: staged the first official Women's World Cup in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: Football was unequivocally a man's world, where the only women
Speaker 1: present were either there to be objectified or in serving roles,
Speaker 1: or both. When High Money decided she wanted to be
Speaker 1: a sports photographer, she must have been somewhat aware of
Speaker 1: this backdrop, making her determination even more impressive. In her
Speaker 1: own words, she needed to photograph football and she wouldn't
Speaker 1: let anything stand in her way. After that first visit
Speaker 1: to Sellhurst Park with her son, Hi knew she wanted
Speaker 1: to return with her camera, but she needed to figure
Speaker 1: out the right approach. Firstly, she needed access to the
Speaker 1: pitch so she could capture close up shots of the players.
Speaker 1: To do that, she discovered she needed a photographer's pass,
Speaker 1: but when she phoned Sellhurst Park's reception she was met
Speaker 1: with resistance. Her requests were shrugged off and her phone
Speaker 1: calls ignored. After multiple attempts of getting nowhere, Hi decided
Speaker 1: to turn up in person unannounced. The long suffering receptionist
Speaker 1: gave in and buzzed her through to Bert Heard, Crystal
Speaker 1: Palace's manager at the time, who was on his lunch break.
Speaker 1: Hi must have been convincing in person, because after pleading
Speaker 1: her case to him, she walked away with both the
Speaker 1: press pass and the bonus portrait of Bert a bowl
Speaker 1: of soup on the stairs. Sadly, getting the media pass
Speaker 1: would turn out to be the easy part. When High
Speaker 1: arrived in the press room for the first match, she
Speaker 1: was unprepared for the outright rude reception she received. The
Speaker 1: other photographers, who were all male, jeered at her, asking
Speaker 1: her where a knitting was. One journalist knocked her over
Speaker 1: and called her sir. Even the infrastructure was sexist. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a single female bathroom in the whole stadium at halftime.
Speaker 1: High would have to wait until all the men had
Speaker 1: left the bathrooms before she'd get to use them. And
Speaker 1: this wasn't just happening at Crystal Palace. It turned out
Speaker 1: that the Football Association had officially banned women from taking
Speaker 1: photos at Wembley Stadium, the so called home of football.
Speaker 1: High was understandably upset. All she wanted to do was
Speaker 1: take a few photos, and instead she was being met
Speaker 1: by an avalanche of misogyny. But she knew she was good,
Speaker 1: and she knew she had as much right to be
Speaker 1: there as anyone else, and so she kept going. On
Speaker 1: any new project she was assigned, she'd always ask herself,
Speaker 1: how could she get the images that no one else could?
Speaker 1: This curiosity served her in good stead. At a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six tennis match at Wimbledon, as the first female
Speaker 1: photographer allowed at the major, High faced the same discrimination
Speaker 1: she'd counted since day one. When she arrived, the smoky
Speaker 1: press room was already filled with the usual male photographers
Speaker 1: and journalists, drinking playing cards and completely ignoring the tennis outside.
Speaker 1: But when they realized that a woman had been granted
Speaker 1: permission to take photos, they sprang into action, threatening a
Speaker 1: mass walkout if she was so much as allowed on
Speaker 1: center court. Tired of having to prove herself again and again,
Speaker 1: Hi couldn't face them, so she left the press room
Speaker 1: and prepared to leave. But, as always, High couldn't stop
Speaker 1: herself from seeing photo worthy images everywhere she looked. So
Speaker 1: when she spotted Sue Barker, the tennis star tip to
Speaker 1: win that year, staring out the window, Hi knew she
Speaker 1: was onto something. She raised her camera to her eye. Sue,
Speaker 1: seeing her below, waved and smiled, and while all other
Speaker 1: photographers were still lounging around in the press room, Hi
Speaker 1: got her shot. As she always did. High Money went
Speaker 1: on to become the official photographer for Crystal Palace Football Club.
Speaker 1: She also covered the English women's football team, the Lionesses,
Speaker 1: when no one else was interested. Throughout her career, High
Speaker 1: captured some of the most iconic images of Crystal Palace.
Speaker 1: She even managed to snap a few celebrities like Elton
Speaker 1: John and Sean Connery. They have taken a completely different
Speaker 1: path than what her parents imagine for her, but she
Speaker 1: never forgot her mother's original request. Displayed proudly alongside all
Speaker 1: the sporting Greats are candid photos of many members of
Speaker 1: Britain's royal family. Written under a photo of the late
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth, a note reads Queen of Buckingham Palace by
Speaker 1: the self appointed Queen of Crystal Palace. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the poolroom with me, Tony Armstrong. This has been
Speaker 1: an iHeart production. Join me next time for more cracking
Speaker 1: sports stories. See you then. Eight