Learn about the photographs

Frank Hurley was the Australian photographer who was selected for  Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914. He had previously made his name on the Douglas Mawson expedition to Antarctic in 1911. Frank Hurley took with him  over 600 glass plates most of those would have been about A5  about ( 6inch x 9inch ), Some  120  film for a  compact camera, some motion picture film, and a recently developed, colour film process. Mostly his time was taken up with taking still photographs with the large plate camera or filming using the film camera that he subsequently made into a  silent feature film.


The photographs you see on this site are from the large plate camera. As a consequence because of the large negative they are technically exceptional and  are of far greater quality than most people realize, that was possible for the day .Hurley was a master, to take and process these images in the conditions that he did.