Published Resources Details
Seminar Paper
- Title
- Frank Hurley: Photographing for science
- In
- given in The Discovery Room, Australian Museum, Tuesday 6pm
- Imprint
- Australian Science History Club, Sydney, 12 October 2005
- Description
Painter, photographer, writer and one-time architect, Alasdair McGregor is the author of four books The Kimberley:Horizons of Stone and Australia's Wild Islands (both with Quentin Chester); Mawson's Huts: An Antarctic Expedition Journal and Frank Hurley: A Photographer's Life. He was artist and photographer for two AAP Mawson's Huts Foundation expeditions to Antarctica, and in 2000 was curator (for the Australian High Commission to Canada) 'of .. that sweep of savage splendour': A Century of Australians in Antarctica a travelling exhibition featuring the photography of Frank Hurley. Alasdair is currently working on a biography of the architects, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.
- Abstract
In September 1911, 25-year old Frank Hurley applied for the post of official photographer and cinematographer on Dr Douglas Mawson's forthcoming Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He claimed a background of more than 10 years practical experience in photography and a knowledge of photomicrography and its application to science.
Mawson's venture came to be regarded as the most successful Antarctic expedition of the era through its achievements in science and exploration. Its reputation was in large part founded on the published scientific results and the popular account, entitled The Home of the Blizzard. But while Hurley proved to be a highly skilled photographer in the field, and a valued member of Mawson's party, his lack of attention to post-expedition duties severely compromised Mawson's publishing ambitions.
Despite an inevitable antagonism that grew between the two men, nearly 20 years later Mawson engaged Hurley once more, for his final Antarctic expedition. Ostensibly a scientific venture, the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition's impetus was firmly geo-political.
I will compare and contrast Hurley's roles in the service of science on these two expeditions and on Ernest Shackleton's famous Endurance Expedition, and I will also examine Hurley's own dabbling with scientific exploration in Papua in the early 1920s.