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Lot Essay
An Australian by birth, Hurley's career as a polar photographer began with Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914. The resulting images of the adverse weather conditions and his film Home of the Blizzard so impressed Sir Ernest Shackleton that Hurley was invited forthwith to join Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition as official photographer. Although Shackleton aimed to make the first crossing of the Antarctic from the Weddell to Ross Seas via the South Pole, the expedition ship Endurance was almost immediately beset by ice in the Weddell Sea in January 1915, eventually sinking in November 1915.
The 'siege' of the ice-bound Endurance provided Hurley with the most powerful subject-matter of his career and the The Low Sun after the Long Winter Night is, arguably, the most dramatic of the series. That the photographs exist at all is remarkable. Hurley was forced to dive down to the submerged ship to retrieve his glass-plate negatives.
The expedition film and glass plate negatives - of which 120 survived from the 400 retrieved by the intrepid Hurley - are now held jointly by the Royal Geographical Society, London and the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
The 'siege' of the ice-bound Endurance provided Hurley with the most powerful subject-matter of his career and the The Low Sun after the Long Winter Night is, arguably, the most dramatic of the series. That the photographs exist at all is remarkable. Hurley was forced to dive down to the submerged ship to retrieve his glass-plate negatives.
The expedition film and glass plate negatives - of which 120 survived from the 400 retrieved by the intrepid Hurley - are now held jointly by the Royal Geographical Society, London and the National Library of Australia, Canberra.