Antarctic Journals of Reginald Skelton by Reginald William Skelton

Expedition records include amateur photography, images that document the work of the explorers (zoology, meteorology, geography) and those that record the use of camera technologies in scientific experiments (microphotography, panoramic views, flashlight photography).

In these images, the histories of photography, science and polar exploration intersect. Footnote 2 Expeditions led by Carsten Borchgrevink, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, and Douglas Mawson experimented with combinations of cameras and photosensitive materials as technologies that offered an unprecedented means of capturing and studying time and movement in an environment that appeared to typify stasis, encapsulated in ice, yet was endlessly susceptible to change. Footnote 1 Antarctica had remained unmapped, “atemporal”, “extreme, acultural, ahistorical, and elemental”, without horological or cartographic measure beyond fragments of its shifting coastline. Photographic records of early 1900s polar exploration encapsulated a paradox: sparse vistas of ice, the “monotonous” “numbing whiteness” of Antarctic landscapes that were described as “without human interest”, yet presented as a source of spectacle in public exhibition. In this context, experimental and “failed” images can be read as part of an ecosystem of interactions and begins to decipher the popularity of Ponting’s 1911 photograph “Ice-Blink”, the image of a seemingly featureless ocean horizon, as the commodification of “nothing” in discursive spaces of exhibition. Anomalies, such as details that were effaced by overexposure to light and watermarks registered the effects of labour in a polar climate These “failed photographic plates were occluded from exhibition, yet remain integral to the ideation of the incomprehensible in polar expedition narratives. However, these materials are also susceptible to the effects of humidity, touch and variations in temperature. Light sensitive materials - photographic emulsion layered onto glass plates and strips of flexible transparent celluloid nitrate film - are integral to the registration of the image. This article examines expedition photography as an ecosystem of materials and meanings to reconsider the status of the “failed” photographic experiments that have remained sublimate to the iconic images of polar exploration. Photographic records of early 1900s polar expeditions encapsulated a paradox: the spectacle of “monotonous” “numbing whiteness” in images of “nothing” that were intended for public exhibition.

Antarctic Journals of Reginald Skelton by Reginald William Skelton