Herbert Ponting; Picturing the Great White South

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations and Theses City College of New York 2014 Herbert Ponting; Picturing the Great White South Maggie Downing CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/328 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The City College of New York Herbert Ponting: Picturing the Great White South Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts of the City College of the City University of New York. by Maggie Downing New York, New York May 2014 Dedicated to my Mother Acknowledgments I wish to thank, first and foremost my advisor and mentor, Prof. Ellen Handy. This thesis would never have been possible without her continuing support and guidance throughout my career at City College, and her patience and dedication during the writing process. I would also like to thank the rest of my thesis committee, Prof. Lise Kjaer and Prof. Craig Houser for their ongoing support and advice. This thesis was made possible with the assistance of everyone who was a part of the Connor Study Abroad Fellowship committee, which allowed me to travel abroad to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, UK. Special thanks goes to Moe Liu- D'Albero, Director of Budget and Operations for the Division of the Humanities and the Arts, who worked the bureaucratic college award system to get the funds to me in time. I am indebted to Naomi Boneham and Lucy Martin at the Scott Polar Research Institute for their patience and knowledge as I studied in their archives, as well as to all of the kind librarians at the New York Public Library. Special thanks goes to my dear friends Jeff Albert, Nikol Burgos, Sabeena Khosla, and Calhoun Truluck for knowing the difference between when to encourage and when to distract me from my work. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, Beth Mitchell and Joe Downing, for always supporting me in my work and never questioning my dreams. Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Picturing the Expansion of Empire 11 Chapter 2: “Ponting” for Ponko: The Constructed Narrative of Antarctic Exploration 37 Chapter 3: Adventure, Comedy, and “Glorious Death” at 90 Degrees South 67 Conclusion 87 Illustrations 92 Bibliography 139 1 Introduction Herbert Ponting (1870-1935), a self-declared “camera artist” was hired by Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) to be the first professional photographer to accompany a polar expedition, the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913. The goal of this expedition was to secure for the British Empire the achievement of sending the first men to the South Pole. While the five-man polar party led by Scott did in fact reach their goal, they found that they were beaten by a team of Norwegians led by Roald Amundsen (1872-1928). The defeated British party never made it back to headquarters, having frozen to death just eleven miles from their next supply depot. Ponting’s Antarctic photographs were used to depict this tragic expedition in early 20th century newspapers and were presented in a series of films, and they continue to be discussed as documentary of the expedition today.1 However, his large-format images of dramatic ice cliffs and vast landscapes of frozen earth echo the romantic and sublime elements typically found in 19th century landscape art, blurring the lines between science, reportage, and art. Although Ponting was hired to record the activities of the expedition, he neglected its scientific work and instead constructed a picture of Antarctica as a glorious and imposing landscape in which the valiant adventurers both triumphed and suffered [Figure 1]. By employing the 1 All of the large illustrated books of Ponting’s work focus on the tale of the perilous expedition rather than Ponting’s aesthetic choices, and he is often grouped with the photographer, Frank Hurley, who accompanied Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica a few years late. These include: A. Savours, ed. Scott’s Last Voyage: Through the Antarctic Camera of Herbert Ponting. (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1975); J. Boddington, Antarctic Photographs 1910-1916: Scott, Mawson and Shackleton Expeditions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980); Beau Riffenburgh and Liz Cruwys, eds. With Scott to the Pole: The Terra Nova Expedition 1910-1913 The Photographs of Herbert Ponting, (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004); _____. Riffenburgh, Beau and Liz Cruwys. The Photographs of H.G. Ponting. (London: The Discovery Gallery, 1998); David Hempleman-Adams, et al. The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton, and Antarctic Photography. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009). Ponting’s biographer said little about Ponting’s artistic intentions beyond the fact that he insisted to be called a “camera artist” and received no formal art schooling. H.J.P. Arnold, Photographer of the World: The Biography of Herbert Ponting, Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1971. 2 aesthetic of the sublime, Ponting made the alien landscape visually understandable to a wide audience and heightened the melodrama of man against nature, thus perpetuating the myth of the colonial explorer as a virile and free spirit, asserting himself amid dangers endured for the good of the British Empire. With the exception of Frank Hurley (1885-1962), Ponting was the only professional photographer to travel to Antarctica during the early part of the century. Because the Antarctic landscape was so vastly different from the rest of the world, and because imagery from this period is so tied to the adventure tales of exploration, Ponting tends to be acknowledged only in the context of Antarctic exploration rather than as an artist operating within visual constructs centuries old and adapting his vision to his contemporary audience. Ponting would certainly not have been one of the highest paid members of the British Antarctic Expedition had Scott not been absolutely sure that Ponting’s work was to bring a great deal of income to the expedition, and had Ponting felt it wouldn’t further his career.2 In this decision, Scott and Ponting were responding to a popular British enthusiasm for both polar exploration and adventure tales. In his book, Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875, Russell Potter chronicled art, panorama 2 Only Cecil Meares, the dog handler and Russian interpreter and Griffith-Taylor, a geologist, received the same salary of 250 pounds/month. Most officers were paid between 100–200 pounds, and the crew all received around 40 pounds. Some, including Trygyve Gran, a midshipman were paid only 1 pound per month, a nominal fee for the members who joined the expedition at their own expense. B.A.E. Agreement and Account of Crew. SPRI MS 129; SL. Scott depended on publicity to pay for the cost of the expedition. In fact, the expedition was so strapped for cash, that the newspapers printed fundraising appeals to the public to pay for expenses in November 1911. There were many articles collected in the SPRI archives that were dated but otherwise uncited. These include: “Captain Scott’s Expedition: Urgent Appeal by the Antarctic Committee for Further Funds,” (November 20, 1911); “Race to the South Pole: Appeal for Support for Scott Expedition,” (November 20, 1911); “Captain Scott’s Dash to the South Pole: Appeal to the Public for 15,000 Pounds,” (November 20, 1911). SPRI MS 1453/38; BPC. 3 and diorama exhibitions on Arctic subjects throughout the 19th century.3 Potter showed that depictions of Arctic landscapes were being exhibited as entertainment as early as the 1810s. However, popular interest in the Arctic escalated with the 1845 disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s naval expedition, which had set out to discover the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean as a possible new trade route with Asia, but never returned. Franklin’s disappearance amidst the uncharted and untrodden Arctic landscape proved a popular melodramatic topic for artists and lecturers alike.4 Following Franklin’s disappearance, dozens of rescue and exploration expeditions set out to the frozen north. Even after hope of finding Franklin or a commercially viable Northwest Passage had waned, these expeditions helped chart the Arctic Ocean and further colonial Britain’s geographic knowledge and claim to the world. Most of these expeditions were funded with published written accounts by the members, who also presented illustrated lectures upon their return.5 The illustrations, such as those in Elisha Kent Kane’s Arctic Explorations, 1856, heightened or exaggerated the vastness and desolation of the landscape [Figure 2].6 The Arctic landscape proved ideal for employing sublime aesthetics that evoked awe, terror and fascination as described by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of 3 Russell Potter, Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 211-225. 4 Ibid. 5 Accounts of Arctic exploration were so popular that they became worldwide bestsellers. Admiral F. Leopold McClintock’s Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas, 1859, outsold works by Alfred Lord Tennyson and George Eliot. Ibid., 155. 6 Franklin’s tale was “depicted in popular panoramas, in illustrated journals, and in the wide sales of books published by the leaders of various search and rescue expeditions in the 1850s.” Diana Donald, ‘The Arctic Fantasies of Edwin Landseer and Briton Riviere: Polar Bears, Wilderness and Notions of the Sublime’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, January 2013, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/diana-donald-the-arctic-fantasies-of-edwin- landseer-and-briton-riviere-polar-bears-r1136829, accessed 09 October 2013.

Load more