Frank Hurley is one of my greatest inspirations as a photographer. He was the official photographer on Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance expedition to Antarctica, which became one of the greatest survival stories ever told and has inspired generations. Yet I often wonder whether the story would have retained quite the same power without Hurley’s photographs. Shackleton’s leadership and the endurance of his men were extraordinary, but Hurley gave their ordeal a face. His images allow us to enter their frozen world, turning an incredible historical account into something immediate, intimate and unforgettable.
It seems miraculous that the photographs survived at all. After the Endurance had been abandoned, Hurley returned to the flooded wreck and plunged into freezing, slushy water to retrieve his glass-plate negatives. He and Shackleton then selected 120 plates to carry with them and smashed roughly 400 others because their weight threatened the men’s survival. Hurley sealed the chosen negatives inside a soldered metal container and somehow protected them throughout the ordeal. Considering the enormous cameras, glass plates and other equipment he had to transport, it is astonishing how inventive he remained—climbing the ship’s rigging, venturing onto the ice and photographing from extraordinary angles to create images of breathtaking drama.
His photographs captured far more than the Endurance trapped, splintering and finally being crushed by the ice. Hurley also recorded the exhausting work of pulling sledges and lifeboats, but he was equally attentive to the quieter life of the expedition: the men reading, playing music and whiling away the endless hours aboard ship; the friendships and humour that sustained them; and the huskies, seals and penguins that shared their strange white world. These beautiful, intimate images give the story its humanity. Hurley was not simply documenting an expedition—he was creating an extraordinary visual portrait of people living together at the very edge of survival.
My appreciation of Hurley was deepened by a presentation Sue and I attended at the State Library of New South Wales in 2016. It also connected profoundly with my own journey to Antarctica in 2013 as a photographer for Upschool. We sailed past Elephant Island, where 22 members of Shackleton’s crew endured four bleak months while he attempted to return and rescue them. Seeing that desolate, windswept place made their survival seem almost impossible. That all 28 members of the Endurance party eventually returned alive remains one of history’s most remarkable testaments to courage, resilience and extraordinary leadership—but it is Frank Hurley’s photographs that allow us to feel the story, rather than merely know it.
Photos Hurly took in Antarctica
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First World War
Hurley carried that same courage and visual imagination into the First World War, serving as an official Australian war photographer on the Western Front. His photographs captured the almost apocalyptic horror of battle—the shell-torn earth, blasted trees, endless mud, smoke and exhausted soldiers moving through landscapes stripped of life. Yet he never lost sight of the human beings caught within that devastation. He photographed soldiers resting, caring for the wounded and finding brief moments of companionship amid the terror. This combination of horror and humanity makes his war photography so powerful: he showed both the terrible destruction human beings can inflict and the courage, tenderness and comradeship that can survive even in the darkest circumstances.
Other photos
Hurley’s restless curiosity later took him to Papua New Guinea, where he photographed its dramatic landscapes, remote communities and richly varied cultures, before turning his camera closer to home and creating an extensive record of Sydney—its harbour, beaches, architecture and rapidly changing cityscape. I find it wonderful that I have also been able to photograph two places that held such fascination for him: Antarctica and Sydney. They could hardly be more different, yet both are deeply special to me. Knowing that I have stood with my own camera in places where Hurley once searched for beauty, drama and human stories gives me an even stronger sense of connection with the photographer who has inspired me so greatly.
