Harold Lloyd: stills by a silent star

He was a comic genius of silent cinema who made more movies than Charlie Chaplin.

But Harold Lloyd also loved being on the other side of the camera, taking more than 300,000 photographs including shots of films stars such as Marilyn Monroe.

Highlights of his collection are to go on public show for the first time alongside stills from the films that made him a star, including The Freshman, The Kid Brother and Safety Last, from which the still of Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street has become an enduring image of American film.

Lloyd's granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, who travelled with him as he took many of his images, said he would have been thrilled at the exhibition, which opens at the Proud Central Gallery in London today. "He was at the cutting edge of doing things. He had a great eye. And this photography is part of that. He always had his camera. He drove us all mad taking pictures of everything."

However, Lloyd, who died in 1971 aged 77, shot all his photographs in a 3D technique that meant they have had to be processed differently to turn them into two-dimensional images.

The exhibition, Harold Lloyd: Silent Pictures, runs until 11 February.