Scott and Shackleton as never seen before in Edinburgh
After more than a year of struggle across a frozen wasteland, five men have finally reached their destination, but instead of celebrating they stare glumly at the camera while behind them a union jack hangs limply in icy air: Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his party have arrived, but they know they have lost the race to be first to reach the South Pole.
This weekend, this image – together with the flag in the photograph – feature among the most moving exhibits in a unique exhibition that opens in Edinburgh to commemorates the heroism, stoicism and death of Scott and his comrades, a century after their great Antarctic adventure began.
Centred around the work of Herbert Ponting, the expedition photographer, The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography, offers a stunning visual account of Scott’s journey, which ended in the tent where the men froze to death just 11 miles from their food depot near Cape Evans. All the images have been taken from a scrapbook which Ponting — who photographed Scott’s doomed team trudging out of sight before himself leaving for Britain — presented to King George V. The images have never before been publicly displayed together.
The second half of the display in the Queen’s Gallery, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is just as remarkable and features images from a second scrapbook compiled by Frank Hurley, who accompanied Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated journey on the ship Endurance, between 1914 and 1916. Like Ponting, Hurley presented a record of his work to the King.
Shackleton’s expedition, to cross Antarctica on foot, came to grief when Endurance was trapped between ice floes and began to disintegrate. Hurley’s images chart the vessel’s final moments as it is crushed by millions of tonnes of ice. Then, with the single-minded dedication of a born artist, he spends months charting on film the astonishing resilience of the men marooned in the ice of Elephant Island...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
This weekend, this image – together with the flag in the photograph – feature among the most moving exhibits in a unique exhibition that opens in Edinburgh to commemorates the heroism, stoicism and death of Scott and his comrades, a century after their great Antarctic adventure began.
Centred around the work of Herbert Ponting, the expedition photographer, The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography, offers a stunning visual account of Scott’s journey, which ended in the tent where the men froze to death just 11 miles from their food depot near Cape Evans. All the images have been taken from a scrapbook which Ponting — who photographed Scott’s doomed team trudging out of sight before himself leaving for Britain — presented to King George V. The images have never before been publicly displayed together.
The second half of the display in the Queen’s Gallery, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is just as remarkable and features images from a second scrapbook compiled by Frank Hurley, who accompanied Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated journey on the ship Endurance, between 1914 and 1916. Like Ponting, Hurley presented a record of his work to the King.
Shackleton’s expedition, to cross Antarctica on foot, came to grief when Endurance was trapped between ice floes and began to disintegrate. Hurley’s images chart the vessel’s final moments as it is crushed by millions of tonnes of ice. Then, with the single-minded dedication of a born artist, he spends months charting on film the astonishing resilience of the men marooned in the ice of Elephant Island...