Based
on text from the original book: Shades of Light:
Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery
Chapter 10 Icelands to Wasteland
Footnotes contents next chapter (11)
The
Antarctic expeditions and the battlefields of World War One
Two
great arenas for heroic action by Australians arose in
the second decade of the new century; scientific exploration
of
the Antarctic, and the punitive expeditions in Europe against
the
enemies of Britain and her realms. By then the status of
photography was such that official, well-equipped photographers
were assigned
to record and promote both events. Frank Hurley (1885-1962)
dominates the photographic history of Australian involvement
in these two sagas.
Hurley
was a transitional figure in surmounting many physical and
technical difficulties in his quest to
obtain rare images.
Hurley inherited the traditions of pioneer views trade
photographers. To these he welded aspects of Pictorialist
aesthetics in
vogue at the beginning of his career at the turn of the
century, whilst
avoiding the concern of that movement with fine art printmaking
and overly personal and poetic vision.
In
presenting his work through films, lectures and publications
as well as
in his later work for the Federal Government’s
Department of Information. Hurley was part of a rising
generation of globe trotting professional photojournalists(1).
Their photographs
were disseminated internationally through reproduction
and cinematography, swamping the already prolific output
and extent of the views
trade.
Hurley
however, remained indifferent to the humanism expressed in
the illustrated magazines from the 1920s
and ‘30s on.
Nature and the great industrial works of man, rather
than individuals, tend to dominate Hurley’s images.
The emotional communication sought by The Family
of Man exhibition at the close
of his life, would perhaps have bewildered a man with
views shaped
by stoical and disciplined virtues appropriate to the
British Empire at
its height(2).
Born
in Sydney, Hurley escaped as a lad of thirteen from the security
of home (and the middle-class
destiny
as
a lawyer hoped
for him by his parents) to a job in the ironworks
at Lithgow, west of the Blue Mountains. A foreman introduced
him to
photography and later, in Sydney, Hurley received
technical
help from
two Pictorialist amateurs involved in the New South
Wales Photographic
Society, Henri Mallard (1884-1967) and Norman
C. Deck.
Hurley began his professional career in
the postcard boom of
1905-1910 as employee, then partner and finally
owner of Cave and Co. He gained a reputation for
novel postcards, such
as trains steaming out of tunnels, night shots and
technical achievements(3), holding
a one-person show at KODAK Galleries in
1910 and helping to organise the Photographic Society’s
big 1911 salon. Hurley apparently had little contact
with Harold Cazneaux and no interest in the ‘fuzzy-wuzzy’ school
of Pictorialism.
Henri
Mallard was influential in Hurley’s partnership with
Sydney Cave and in 1911 recommended Hurley take
his own place as a candidate for the position of official
photographer to the
Australasian Antarctic expedition led by Dr Douglas
Mawson (1882-1958).
Hurley literally talked himself into the job on
a
short train journey with Mawson, over the more
experienced candidate, Melbourne
photographer Jack Cato. The Mawson expedition left
on the Aurora from Hobart in December 1911. It
was preceded by the ill-fated
British Antarctic expedition of 1910-1913 under
Captain Robert Scott (1868-1912) which resulted
in the death of Scott and four members of his party
in 1912.
With
his appointment to Scott’s expedition,
British photographer, Herbert G. Ponting (1870-1935),
an experienced and well-known travel photographer
became the first official professional photographer
to be sent to the Antarctic. Scott told Ponting
that ‘he
considered photography was of such importance
in exploration that it was his intention to make
a
special department of the
art'(4). Ponting
regarded himself as an artist and was listed
as ‘camera
artist’ on the expedition roll(5). Many
of the members of the expedition were amateur
photographers
and Ponting gave them
further instruction.
Whatever
the pure documentary or scientific role photography had to
play on
the expedition, it
was also apparent
to the fundraisers by this time, that photography,
and the
newer
medium of film,
could be crucial in representing the events
to the public. Photography had at last joined with
the tradition
established
by expedition
artists of the great Pacific voyages of discovery
centuries before. Their work had captured the
imagination of
the public in Europe
and became an important source of revenue and
a stimulus to further exploration.
Scott
and his party suffered harrowing deaths on their return from
a dash to be the first
to reach
the South
Pole, which
had resulted only in their discovery that
Roald
Amundsen (1872-1928)
had beaten them to it a month before on 14
December 1911.
Ponting
who had returned to Europe by mid 1912, only learnt of the
polar tragedy in
early 1913.
His majestic
and beautiful
photographs
of the Antarctic scenery, the expedition
members and the animal life were a revelation
in themselves
but
were also
touched by
the public knowledge of the fate of Scott
and his party. When war broke out Ponting
was encouraged
to continue
with his lectures
and lantern slide and film presentations
as an aid to the war effort. King George
V, on
seeing
the film
in
May 1914,
hoped
that, it might be possible for every British
boy
to see the pictures as the story of the
Scott expedition could
not be
too widely
known among the youth of the nation for
it would help
to promote the spirit of adventure that
had made the Empire(6). The
heroism of the party was also seen as encouragement
to the troops in Europe in 1915 when shown
Ponting’s films(7).
Mawson
and Hurley did not know of the losses of Scott’s expedition,
or the monumental work of Ponting, when they faced their own
difficulties and dangers on the Australasian expedition (during
which Mawson lost two of his men, and nearly his own life). However,
they too independently realised the role high quality photography
could play on their return to civilisation. Mawson was evidently
already an experienced photographer and used the new colour autochromes
on the expedition(8).
The
Antarctic experiences of Hurley and Ponting were basically similar;
the
ordinary difficulties of photography being magnified a thousand
fold by the cruel weather,
the lack of sunshine and daylight, the risk of frostbite if operations meant
contact between skin and metal camera parts. As well, the unknown behaviour
of the latest technology film and colour plates under such conditions
could not
before seen. Hurley suffered more physically rough conditions but he was a
fitter and more natural explorer than Ponting, despite the latter’s
wide travels in the Northern Hemisphere(9).
Hurley
returned to Hobart by March 1913. His film Home of the Blizzard
was
being shown in Sydney by the end of the year with Hurley delivering a narration
in
person. His film and photographic work was desperately needed to help the
expedition recoup costs. In a familiar pattern of restless activity,
he soon set off on
new journeys to Java to make a film for the promotion of travel cruises to
that region and back to Antarctica to collect Mawson and his remaining team
in November
1913. Following his return he was off again with photographer, explorer and
showman Francis Birtles (1881-1941)(10) as
cameraman for a film on Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Whilst
in the north filming Into Australia’s Unknown with
Birtles, Hurley was summoned to join the Imperial Trans-Antarctic
expedition planned for
1914-1915
to be led by Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922). His fame had spread,
for the financial syndicate backing the expedition made the employment
of Hurley,
and rights to any subsequent film, a condition of their sponsorship. It
was to be the most exciting commission to an Australian photographer
since Holtermann
had sent Merlin to photograph Australia for his World Exposition in 1873.
Within
five weeks Hurley was in Buenos Aires on board the Endurance,
and by October the expedition was in the South Atlantic. This
was where they
were
to stay for
the ship became trapped for the winter in the icepacks. The spring brought
disaster as the ship was crushed by the moving floes. Winter had not
been conducive to
much photography but the wreck of the ship was well recorded by Hurley
in stills and film; some scenes were shot on the new Paget colour plates.
Hurley,
who
by temperament was inclined to the view that man must earn a place by
physical endurance
against the might of nature, must have revelled in the natural ‘movie’ unfolding
before his camera.
The
crew of the Endurance were marooned on a strip of beach on Elephant
Island for nearly a year. Many of Hurley’s
negatives and films were destroyed by him and Shackleton to lessen
the loads to be carried after the Endurance finally
sank, leaving the crew on an ice floe. In a saga of adventure and good
fortune, Shackleton and five crew eventually sailed in a small boat
to South Georgia,
traversed this island and alerted the Stromness Whaling Station of
the plight of their comrades. Five months later Shackleton returned
to collect
his still
unharmed team from Elephant Island. The film In the Grip of the
Polar Ice, which included additional wildlife footage shot by
Hurley during a further five weeks
in South Georgia, was another triumph and saved the Shackleton expedition
from insolvency.
Ponting’s
photographs were shown as enlarged carbon prints at the Fine
Arts Society in London in 1913 and Hurley
also displayed still photographs in
this attractive format. Many of Hurley’s images were manipulated
by montaging elements from different negatives and the insertion
of cloud effects. This gave
some the character described recently as 'histrionic tableaux' and
Hurley cannot be excused from failing to have confidence in the original
photographs.
Certainly
Ponting did not face the dangers of the Shackleton expedition,
but neither would he have resorted to such a blatant
appeal to popular
taste. Be
considered himself an artist but had no time for the fakery of
the Pictorial School or even the selective focus of P. H. Emerson.
Carbon
printing tends to glamorise the worst of photographs but in
comparison Ponting was the far superior artist, often achieving
dramatic
photographs,
without the montage that Hurley arrived at by combination printing(11). Ponting’s
portraits of the Scott expedition members with their direct gaze
and full frame compsitions also show up Hurley’s tendency
to reduce the individual to a member of a species battling nature’s
forces rather than the heroes the public wanted to see.
If
Ponting was the greater artist, Hurley was the better businessman.
As
Shackleton left on his perilous voyage in an open boat to
South Georgia, Hurley had the
presence of mind not to be carried away by the sentiment of
the occasion. He had Shackleton sign a document safeguarding
Hurley’s
rights to the film and photographic work. Ponting, operating
on a gentleman’s agreement with
a dead leader was largely cheated of financial rights to his
Antarctic work. Hurley, ever willing to risk his life for adventure,
would finally have not made
photographs if they did not pay. In this attitude he was closer
to the nineteenth century travelling photographers and Ponting
to the art photographers of the
early twentieth century, whose creed was to work for love of
the medium alone(12).
By
August 1917 Hurley was in the blasted wastelands of Ypres and
the
Battle of Passchendaele of the British Autumn Campaign.
He
held the
rank of Captain
as
an official photographer, a title which was retained after
the war. The photographic unit was under Captain (Dr) Charles
Bean,
the Official
War
Correspondent.
Hurley’s
established interest in ‘artistic verisimilitude’ rather
than documentary historical truth led to conflicts with Bean.
There were other photographers in
the unit, Lieutenant (later Sir) George Hubert Wilkins (1888-1958),
an Arctic explorer and cinematographer(13) who
had been with V. Stefansson’s
Canadian expedition, was an assistant but in order to compromise
with Hurley’s
desire to produce publicity pictures and aesthetic results’,
Bean put Wilkins in charge of documentary material(14).
The
long, drawn-out campaign in France and the need to sustain
morale at home had evidently modified the official resistance
to reportage
of the
war in all
of the allied services. The virtues of heroic sacrifice
in a good cause that had been exemplified by the Antarctic expeditions,
were
in danger
of crumbling
as victory proved elusive and the carnage unprecedented
in
European
history. Hurley extracted some concessions in the production
of his combination
pictures, which Bean privately called fakes, on threat
of resigning his commission(15).
Hurley
was transferred to Palestine at the end of 1917, which, compared
to the war zone in France, was ‘more or less a holiday’(16).
He returned to England in March 1918 to prepare an exhibition, Australian War Pictures and Photographs,
including 136 of his photographs, at the Grafton Galleries.
The exhibition included Paget plate colour photographs shown
in a projector. Irritated that Hurley’s
name was so prominent, seemingly an advertisement for
himself rather than for the war effort, Bean made sure Hurley
did not
take the exhibition to Australia.
Hurley resigned his commission in July 1918.
Hurley
was by no means the only war photographer, but in the subsequent
histories the publication of his images
led to his
close association
with the war in
the public imagination. The colour work has only recently
been published to any great
extent and had he lived he would no doubt have seen
some
justification for his concern for the work as ‘pictures’ as
well as documents in the contemporary interest in art
photography.
Hurley’s
long career in films and stills, and in book illustration in
the later years,
included further trips to the Antarctic and a second
commission
as a photographer in World War Two. He also made
important expeditions to New Guinea in the early 1920s. The photographs
are excellent in detail, more comprehensive
in coverage than Lindt’s New Guinea pictures,
but less graceful and lacking in human contact for
all his use of close-ups(17). Hurley’s
film Pearls and Savages of 1922 was enormously popular
and fulfilled
in its fashion the role
that Lindt’s Picturesque New Guinea had in
the late nineteenth century.
Few
of the images in official publications dealing
with World War One contained images as dramatic
as Hurley’s(18). Some of these publications were
curious — an
album of aerial photographs illustrating the devastation
of the landscape during the Third Battle of the Somme
was produced by the War Department(19). The war shown
here was far from the heroics depicted by Hurley.
The abstract patterns anticipate
the photographers of the 1920’s who would seek
abstract form rather than the picturesque atmosphere
of Pictorialism.
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