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Download the Herbert Ponting Information Sheet The Wilson Art Gallery & Museum Information Sheet Herbert Ponting (1870 to 1935) Herbert Ponting is best known as the photographer who made the first set of professional images of the Antarctic. He was recruited by Robert Scott and worked alongside Edward Wilson, a scientist and artist, to record the Terra Nova expedition, its personnel and the wildlife and landscape of the Antarctic. Ponting: early life Ponting was born in Salisbury, and followed his father into banking, but soon discovered it was not Herbert Ponting and his camera in the Antarctic the profession for him. He went to America seeking adventure, finding work as a miner and fruit-grower and marrying Mary Elliott. But he was not content, and by 1900 turned to photography. Ponting: photographer in Asia He entered competitions and finding success went on to publish images with stories in English speaking publications. In 1904 to 1905 he reported on the Russo-Japanese war, and travelled extensively around Asia, visiting Burma, China, India, Java and Korea, covering wars and other assignments. Ponting was interested in all new photographic developments including the moving image. Ponting: photographer with the Terra Nova Ponting was selected by Scott to join his 1910 Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic. He was the first official photographer to the southern continent, but also on any such scientific expedition. Scott was an innovator and selected Ponting for his team as he wanted to pursue the possibilities that photography offered for scientific and geographical recording. He had Many of Ponting’s photographs captured the realities of life in the Antarctic used the medium on the Discovery, but not to any great extent. This was a first; and Ponting worked alongside Edward Wilson, who was recording similar images through his sketches and watercolours. Ponting regarded himself as a ‘camera artist’. He documented just about every aspect of expedition life, from the time the Terra Nova left Britain in 1910 until he returned on the ship 14 months later. His attention to detail and of course the much slower shutter speeds of the period, meant that he took his time actually taking a photograph. Whilst this was of little consequence with a landscape shot, his human subjects gave vent to much muttering. So much so that the team members came up with their own phrase for the experience, ‘to pont’, referring to keeping still for a long time. Ponting: The lecturer Ponting returned home with 1,700 photographic plates and the first moving image film from Antarctica. The plan was for Ponting to assemble lecture slides, and when Scott returned, the pair of them were going to set up a series of talks and performances to raise money to cover the outstanding debt on the expedition! This never happened as Scott did not return, but Ponting proceeded to give lectures on his own in London. He also released the movie film the Great White Silence in 1922. Whilst not a commercial success, coming straight after the First World War when other matters were uppermost in the national mind, the film is a unique and important record of the expedition. Ponting also produced some of the earliest film related merchandise, a toy penguin called ‘Ponko’. The original toy is now held at the National Maritime Museum. Ponting: The First World War Ponting offered his services to the War Office in the First World War, but he was considered too old. His Antarctic films were accepted through and were shown to the troops. One chaplain wrote that the men were moved by the heroism of Scott and his men. In 1918 Shackleton asked Ponting to join a trip to Spitsbergen, where he was going on behalf of the Government to check that the rich mining deposits there were not being appropriated by the Russians or Germans. Ponting, who held investments in a British company mining in Spitsbergen, travelled around the island with a small team, taking hundreds of photographs of the mines, mineral seams, and geographical features. Final years Ponting used his images of Spitsbergen in a double bill with his Terra Nova films, promoting the landscape and life in both polar regions. His work did much to take his audiences out of their ‘dull gloom’ following the war. But none of his work was financially sustainable and Ponting struggled to make ends meet. He died in 1935 having sold his photographs to fund his medical expenses. Fortunately, these photographs have survived and are now at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge though copies of many images are held at The Wilson. Ponting left a unique and lasting legacy through his capture of the Antarctic which far outweighs his own struggles in the last years of his life. .
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