First female football photographer Hy Money tells pioneering story

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8 Mar 2023

When Hy Money first walked into the press room at Selhurst Park, she was met by a sea of men, and taunted for being a woman. She was refused entry to Wembley, and told by Fleet Street journalists that they’d walk out if she photographed Wimbledon.

She had no interest in football for much of her life, and yet, despite everything, became the first female football photographer in the world.

It all began in Bangalore, India, where Money was born and raised. She was sent to boarding school “on top of a mountain”, and left India for England after graduating. It was then she received her first camera, a present from her mother so Money could send home photos of Buckingham Palace. “[My mother] was a great admirer of the royal family,” Money explains.

This article was first published on International Women's Day 2022, and has been republished as part of Palace's celebrations of women at the heart of the club.

Hy Money: The first female football photographer

She married in England, expressing her passion for photography by taking pictures of her children playing football, a sport she didn't follow.

But one day she asked her son Martin, then aged six, what he wanted to do for his birthday. He wanted to go to Selhurst Park.

“I never realised when I eventually had to go to the match what a magical world it was,” Money told Palace TV in an interview for International Women’s Day (in 2022). “It was like a new world had opened up to me. It was just people and families and colour and joy. The smell of hotdogs, people selling scarves and souvenirs. It was like I’d gone into this magical world I didn’t even know existed.

“I watched all this action going on the pitch and it was so beautiful, like ballet. My eyes were clicking. When the goalkeeper went to pick up the ball, surrounded by [players] and just rose above it, in my head I was going: click, click. It was beautiful. In that magical moment, you click and have it there [in a photograph].

“I said: ‘Right, I’m coming back here again.’”

Money was resolved to return, but couldn’t get through to club staff to secure a photographers’ pass. She had no employer or demonstrable professional experience, but went in person to Selhurst regardless.

There she met then-manager Bert Head who, exasperated with Money’s efforts to get in, soon allowed her a pass.

But life in 1970s football was a tough place to be a woman: “I went up to the press room and it was full of men. They said: ‘Hello, hello, hello, look what’s just walked in.’ And I was not expecting to be treated so badly. They’d say: ‘What you got in your bag, darling? Got your knitting with you? Brought your crochet?’

“I thought: ‘Why are they so rude?’ One of them walked up and knocked me over, and said: ‘Sorry, sir, never noticed you standing there.’… I had no idea; I was so – would you say naïve, or innocent, or childlike in my enthusiasm?”

Money persisted, capturing some of the most memorable moments in Palace history, from Malcolm Allison building his image to the greatest games in the club’s existence. She worked at Wimbledon and beyond, photographing names from Sean Connery to Elton John.

“I didn’t know I was being a pioneer because I didn’t watch football, didn’t read about football. I didn’t know the background.

“I want women who are going to be faced and have been faced [by discrimination] all these decades, centuries even, to say to women out there: ‘If you believe in what you do, and you have the right to do it, whatever young girls out there, follow your dreams.

‘Know in your heart that you have the right. If you feel you have the right and are gifted and want to go somewhere and do something, do not let the fact you’re female stop you. Those days have gone.’”

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