29 August 1915, 109 years ago today: Frank Hurley’s picture of the Endurance, stuck fast in the Antarctic ice, during the polar night, illuminated using about 20 flashes.
“Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amidst the hummocks, bumping my shins against projecting ice points and stumbling into deep snow drifts,” the photographer noted.
Born in 1885, Hurley accompanied British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition which saw Endurance crushed in the ice in October 1915. The survivors, Hurley included, were rescued by a Chilean trawler the following August.
A collection of Hurley’s glass plates, photographs, and notes from his half-dozen Antarctic journeys are held by the State Library of New South Wales.