Everyone is familiar with the story of Robert Falcon Scotts’ tragic South Pole odyssey, and over the years I’ve read most of the popular accounts. However, it was just recently that I realized that the official cinematographer of the expedition, Hebert Ponting, had written his own account entitled: The Great White South: Traveling with Robert F. Scott’s Doomed South Pole Expedition.

Herbert Ponting produced some of the most well-known and lasting images of the Antarctic. A self-taught professional, he spent his early career traveling through Asia and Europe delivering wonderfully composed photographs of landscapes and peoples back to a wide variety of magazines, periodicals, newspapers and publishers. Born in Salisbury, England in 1870, Ponting immigrated to California in his early twenties after refusing to pursue the career in banking his father intended for him. He tried his hand in fruit farming and as well as in mining, neither of which were financially successful.

He became interested in photography and spent some years in Japan working on documenting the beauty of the country. Soon after the publication in 1910 of his book “In Lotus-land Japan“, Ponting joined Captain Robert Scott’s crew as the first professional photographer or ‘camera artist’ as he preferred to be called, to be employed on an Antarctic expedition. Ponting pursued his photography with a steadfastness that sometimes put himself or others into potentially hazardous situations. He was often to be seen piecing together various hoists to hold himself and his gear over the edge of the ship in order to get the perfect shot.

After the news of Scott’s death Ponting spent the rest of his life and career dedicated to ensuring that the splendor of the Antarctic and Scott’s valor would never be forgotten. Ponting never really succeeded in benefiting financially from his photographic and cinematographic skills. It seems that he was not a particularly shrewd businessman and the financial aspects of the film and stills rights were never clearly agreed or addressed. He died in 1935, after spending the final years of his life working on a range of projects unrelated to his experiences in Antarctica.

Much of what Ponting brings to The Great White South is going to be familiar. He obviously was a great admirer of Scott, as where most of the men on the expedition, but I got the feeling that his friendship and respect was genuine and well earned. The prose is the usual dry, understated dialog of the period, but it is immensely refreshing to hear of his trials and tribulations. Here’s an excerpt:

To ‘thread’ a film into a kinematograph camera, in low temperatures, was an unpleasant job, for it was necessary to use bare fingers whilst doing so. Often when my fingers touched metal they became frostbitten. Such frostbite feels exactly like a burn. Once, thoughtlessly, I held a camera screw for a moment in my mouth. It froze instantly to my lips, and took the skin off them when I removed it. On another occasion, my tongue came into contact with a metal part of one of my cameras, whilst moistening my lips as I was focusing. It froze fast instantaneously; and to release myself I had to jerk it away, leaving the skin of the end of my tongue sticking to the camera, and my mouth bled so profusely that I had to gag it with a handkerchief.

Herbert Ponting can be regarded as a pioneer of modern polar photography. His photographs were a huge influence on Frank Hurley who, inspired by Ponting’s achievements, went on to photograph and film Shackleton’s 1914-17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

This book is well worth reading for anyone interested in the great age of polar exploration.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.