Shackleton knew that Hurley’s photographs would be of great value for the book he intended to write and in building his legend.
The mission was a complete failure. The famous polar explorer and his men did not even set foot on the continent, their boat having become engulfed by ice in conditions that were extreme even for that part of the world. Though the hardships suffered by Shackleton and his men were barely believable, not one of them died, which earned the expedition leader even more ac‑ claim than would have come his way had he achieved his objective. In con‑ trast to the drama endured by Scott, Shackleton’s good judgment and con‑ cern for his men were held up as exam‑ ples for others to follow. The expedition also had its own photographer and an outstanding one at that in the Australian Frank Hurley (1885‑1962), who took part in Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911‑14 and who had the fortune (or misfortune) of having no option but to experience the tremen‑ dous vicissitudes endured by oth‑ ers. In capturing them, however, he became a legend of photography. His photos of the icebound Endurance are nothing short of spellbinding. In some the vessel is completely white, resembling a ghost ship looming in the winter darkness, not unlike The Flying Dutchman or something out of a Hans Christian Andersen tale illustrat‑ ed by Arthur Rackham (Hurley used no fewer than 20 flashes to illuminate the ship). Entrapped by the ice on 20 56
DOSSIER
photographs would be of great value for the book he intended to write and in building his legend. In the 20‑month odyssey that fol‑ lowed, Hurley recorded every episode of note and the gradual transforma‑ tion of the men: their stay on Elephant Island, the launch of the lifeboat James Caird in a bid to reach help, and the eventual rescue of all the men in September 1916. The determination and bravery Hurley showed in surviving the ordeal and in keeping his camera and photos with him earned him the respect of the seasoned explorers. “He was a warrior with his camera and would go anywhere or do anything to get a pic‑ ture,” wrote one of them. In later taking on the role as the official photographer of the Australian Imperial Force on the battlefields of the first world war, he would earn similar recognition from the troops during the Third Battle of Ypres, risking his life to capture the experience of modern warfare. I wrote above that the only photo‑ graphic evidence of the Franklin expe‑ dition of 1845‑47 – a grim tale of Arctic woe in which all 129 members and the two ships (the Erebus and Terror) per‑ ished – were the portraits of the men who took part in it. However, our imag‑ inary album of iconic polar exploration photos would not be complete without the awful yet representative images taken many years later on the exhu‑ mation of the frozen bodies of several of the crew members, who had been buried by their doomed colleagues. The recently taken underwater pho‑ tos of the ships in the Canadian Arctic – one of the greatest of all archaeolog‑ ical finds, with many secrets yet to be revealed – are also worthy of a place in that album.
Richard Misrach. Untitled, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
I cannot resist the urge to mention one last image, albeit of a far more in‑ timate nature: a photo of a completely naked Nansen, aged 67. It was taken for him to send to Brenda Ueland, a Minneapolis‑based writer 30 years his junior and with whom he had an affair in 1929, a year before his death. It is an interesting example of the sheer variety and versatility of polar photography, in which the explorer’s white body is, with‑ out question, an eloquent metaphor for the desire to make discoveries. ¶
Jacinto Antón (Barcelona, Spain, 1957). Graduated in Journalism and also in Acting in Barcelona Theater Institute. He has been working in the Culture section of the newspaper El País for more than 20 years. In 2009 he published the book Pilotos, caimanes y otras aventuras extraordinarias, which compiles the chronicles that appeared in the edition of the newspaper in Catalonia. That year he received the National Prize for Cultural Journalism awarded by the Ministry of Culture.