Thinking with photographs at the margins of Antarctic exploration A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Canterbury by Kerry McCarthy University of Canterbury 2010 Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... 2 List of Figures and Tables ............................................................................................ 5 Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... 6 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 7 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 9 1.1 Thinking with photographs ....................................................................... 10 1.2 The margins ............................................................................................... 14 1.3 Antarctic exploration ................................................................................. 16 1.4 The researcher ........................................................................................... 20 1.5 Overview ................................................................................................... 22 2 An unauthorised genealogy of thinking with photographs .............................. 27 2.1 The new light: photography as tool and witness ...................................... 28 2.2 The new art: photography enters the art establishment ............................ 31 2.3 Speaking photographs: photography and communication ....................... 33 2.4 Means of address: codes, signs and languages ......................................... 37 2.5 Vernaculars and objects: returning the material and the unique to the picture ........................................................................................................ 42 2.6 What remains ............................................................................................. 49 2.7 Summary .................................................................................................... 51 3 Beginning again: Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and the two ways of the photograph ............................................................................................................. 53 3.1 Photographs and the construction of time ................................................ 54 3.2 The two levels of photographic meaning.................................................. 61 3.2.1 The cultured photograph .................................................................... 62 3.2.2 The remainder ..................................................................................... 68 3.3 Two unavoidable clichés: the studium and the punctum ......................... 74 3.4 Summary .................................................................................................... 82 4 A new approach: thinking photographs with Burke ........................................ 84 4.1 Burke’s overarching concept of identification ......................................... 87 4.1.1 First principles: Dramatism, rhetoric and symbolic action ............... 87 4.1.2 Networks of aspiration ....................................................................... 90 4.1.3 Recurring patterns and tropes: the scapegoat and irony .................... 97 4.2 Technology and the visual: two issues in the application of Burke’s thinking .................................................................................................... 103 4.3 Burke’s pentad of dramatistic analysis ................................................... 106 4.3.1 The decisive moment before: determining the representative anecdote ............................................................................................ 107 4.4 Thinking the pentad for photographs ...................................................... 109 4.4.1 Act ..................................................................................................... 112 4.4.2 Scene ................................................................................................. 115 4.4.3 Agent ................................................................................................. 118 4.4.4 Agency .............................................................................................. 119 2 4.4.5 Purpose.............................................................................................. 122 4.5 Through data to transcendence: the alchemic opportunities of Burke’s ratios......................................................................................................... 123 4.5.1 Collective photographs: The scene-act ratio .................................... 125 4.5.2 Individual photographs: The act-agent ratio .................................... 127 4.6 Summary: the analytical framework for thinking with the Joyce collection ................................................................................................. 129 5 All there is to use: photographs and Antarctic exploration ........................... 133 5.1 “A very disappointing region for photography”: photographs and the popular construction of Antarctic exploration ........................................ 133 5.1.1 Ponting and Hurley: two unavoidable clichés in Antarctic photography ...................................................................................... 136 5.1.2 Another approach: scrapbooks, fragments and narratives of impression ......................................................................................... 141 5.2 Recent academic constructions of heroic-era Antarctica ....................... 142 5.2.1 Imaginaries and modernity ............................................................... 143 5.2.2 Modalities, photographs and marking.............................................. 148 5.3 Summary .................................................................................................. 157 6 Ernest Edward Mills Joyce: constructions of a life ........................................ 158 6.1 The early years and the first expeditions ................................................ 158 6.1.1 Discovery .......................................................................................... 159 6.1.2 Nimrod .............................................................................................. 161 6.2 Joyce’s final Antarctic expedition: The Ross Sea Party, “… the worst crowd of ruffians unhung” ...................................................................... 165 6.2.1 Joyce’s Ross Sea Party log: The South Polar Trail ......................... 167 6.2.2 Photograph making ........................................................................... 176 6.2.3 The end of the beginning: the return of the Aurora ......................... 176 6.3 Re-civilisation: Joyce in the aftermath of Antarctic exploration ........... 178 6.3.1 Captain Mills Joyce the famous explorer: the making of self ......... 182 6.4 Summary .................................................................................................. 188 7 Living the ice (im)age: a pentadic thinking of the Joyce collection .............. 191 7.1 The Joyce collection and the scene-act ratio .......................................... 193 7.1.1 Objects and origins ........................................................................... 193 7.1.2 Associations and identifications ....................................................... 196 7.1.3 In the picture ..................................................................................... 197 7.2 Agency: the photographic object ............................................................ 201 7.2.1 Copying and inscribing .................................................................... 203 7.2.2 Assembling ....................................................................................... 207 7.2.3 Time and distance ............................................................................. 211 7.3 Individual photographs and the act-agent ratio ...................................... 213 7.3.1 Transition and ritual.......................................................................... 215 7.3.2 The picture maker ............................................................................. 224 7.3.3 Human will and networks of identification ..................................... 231 7.4 Summary .................................................................................................. 236 8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 241 3 8.1 Thinking with photographs reviewed ..................................................... 241 8.2 The margins revived ................................................................................ 251 8.3 Antarctic exploration revised .................................................................. 253 8.4 Summary .................................................................................................. 257 9 References ............................................................................................................ 260 10 Appendix A: Main British-led expeditions of the heroic era of Antarctic exploration