A lavish account of pioneering polar photography and modern
portraiture, "Face to Face: Polar Portraits" brings together in a
single volume both rare, unpublished treasures from the historic
collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI),
University of Cambridge, 'face to face' with cutting-edge modern
imagery from expedition photographer Martin Hartley.This unique
book by Huw Lewis-Jones is the first to examine the history and
role of polar exploration photography, and showcases the very first
polar photographs of 1845 through to images from the present day.
It features the first portraits of explorers, some of the earliest
photographs of the Inuit, the first polar photographs to appear in
a book, and rare images never before published from many of the
Heroic-Age Antarctic expeditions. Almost all the historic imagery -
daguerreotypes, magic lantern slides, glass plate negatives and
images from private albums - that have been rediscovered during
research for this book have never been before the public eye.Set
within a 'gallery' of 100 double page-spreads are 50 of the world's
finest historic polar portraits from the SPRI collection alternated
with 50 modern-day images by Martin Hartley, who has captured men
and women of many nations, exploring, working, and living in the
Polar Regions today. Each gallery spread, dedicated to a single
individual, gives a sense of the isolation and intense personal
experience each 'face' has had in living or travelling through the
polar wilderness, whether they be one of the world's greatest
explorers, or a humble cook.In addition to this remarkable
collection is a foreword written by Sir Ranulph Fiennes; a
fascinating exploration into 'photography then' - the history of
photography and its role in shaping our vision of the polar hero by
historian and curator of art at SPRI, Dr Huw Lewis-Jones; a
discussion between Dr Lewis-Jones and Martin Hartley about
'photography now', focusing on the essential role that photography
plays in modern polar adventuring; and an afterword entitled 'The
Boundaries of Light' by the best-selling author Hugh Brody.Does an
explorer need to appear frostbitten and adventurous to be seen as
heroic, and do we need faces like these to imagine their
achievement?Sir John Franklin is the first. The sun is high. He
adjusts his cocked hat, bound with black silk, and gathers up his
telescope. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, positioned on the
deck of the stout ship Erebus, as she wallows at her moorings in
the London docks. It is 1845. The photographer, Richard Beard,
urges the explorer to stay still for just a moment longer. He
removes the lens cap, he waits, another minute, and then swiftly
slots it back in place. The first polar photographic portrait is
secured.Other senior officers of the exploration ships Erebus and
Terror had their photographs taken that day, optimistic and ever
hopeful. They appear to us now as if frozen in time. So too they
followed Sir John Franklin as he led them in search of a navigable
northwest passage, into the maze of islands and straits which forms
the Canadian Arctic.'Mr Beard, at Franklin's request, supplied the
expedition with a complete photographic apparatus, which was safely
stowed aboard the well-stocked ship alongside other technological
marvels: portable barrel-organs, tinned meat and soups, scientific
equipment, the twenty-horse-power engines loaned from the Greenwich
railway, and a library of over twelve hundred volumes. The camera
now formed part of the kit thought essential to travel to the
limits of the known world. Weighed down with stores, yet buoyant
with Victorian confidence, the expedition sailed from the Thames on
19 May. The ships were last seen in late July, making their way
northward in Baffin Bay, before vanishing without a trace - Huw
Lewis-Jones,from the essay 'Photography Then' in "Face to
Face".This title is available in both hardback and soft-cover. It
features placement: photography, exploration, travel. It contains
288 pages in full-colour, including images that have never before
been published. The South Pole was an awful place to be on 18
January 1912. Captain Scott and his four companions - Wilson,
Bowers, Oates, and Evans - had just found that the Norwegian
explorer Amundsen had beaten them to the prize one month earlier.
The photograph that the men took that day speaks volumes for their
achievement, of course, but there could be no truer record of their
total disappointment. The men look absolutely broken; a photograph
on top of everything else seems like a punishment. They are utterly
devastated. A life's ambition has been snatched from their grasp.
Now 800 miles from their base, they dragged themselves northward
into the mouth of a raging blizzard. Their photographs and letters
home, recovered with their bodies some time later, tell the sad
tale of their sacrifice - Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
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