Glacial Erratics

Hurley's Endurance

August 22, 2004

The headline at The Guardian: Shackleton expedition pictures were 'faked' made me whimper.    (NIM)

The story of the crew of the Endurance is one of my favorites. The thought of having it revealed many years later, on a BBC documentary, as a scare-quotes reality show threatened to break my little heart.    (NIN)

Turns out, thankfully, that while Hurley did manipulate and sometimes stage images, it was a case of giving his artistic side a lead but not a complete win over his journalistic side. I find this appropriate: where the medium in its base form cannot transmit the meaning, a little help that colors is okay because no medium can transmit the truth.    (NIO)

The title of the BBC documentary is a nice double entendre: Frank Hurley - The Man Who Made History.    (NIP)

http://www.burningchrome.com/~cdent/images/endurance.jpg    (NIQ)

Comments

1/7
On August 22, 2004 05:13 PM wasta said:

I think that it is true in media (or even story-telling) that you have to lie to tell the truth.    (NIR)

People forget that the simple act of taking any picture is editorial and biased and staged...Excpect for maybe that artist who put his camera on motor-drive and threw it up in the air.    (NIS)

2/7
On August 22, 2004 05:15 PM wasta said:

I think that it is true in media (or even story-telling) that you have to lie to tell the truth.    (NIT)

People forget that the simple act of taking any picture is editorial and biased and staged...Excpect for maybe that artist who put his camera on motor-drive and threw it up in the air.    (NIU)

3/7
On August 22, 2004 08:42 PM Cooper said:

"Where the medium in its base form cannot transmit the meaning, a little help that colors is okay because no medium can transmit the truth."    (NIX)

That's awesome; I will write this on a scrap of paper and carry it in my wallet.    (NIY)

As a "photographer" (and "writer") I'm ever-concerned with fabricating reality. I fall hard on the journalistic side; studio photography doesn't interest me much, and I totally discount photographic trickery (except for using Photoshop to clone out the occasional distracting background element). But especially in my writing I'm tempted to distort and enhance, and maybe now I won't feel so bad about it.    (NIZ)

I enjoyed reading about Hurley's efforts to Get The Photo: putting a camera on a pole and climbing to the crow's nest, climbing out on the yard arm, always having his camera ready as he went about the ship. I understand the urge there and think his heart was in the right place. Also, our modern American standards of journalistic integrity hadn't been formulated yet.    (NJ0)

4/7
On August 22, 2004 09:41 PM Cooper said:

"Where the medium in its base form cannot transmit the meaning, a little help that colors is okay because no medium can transmit the truth."    (NJ1)

That's awesome; I will write this on a scrap of paper and carry it in my wallet.    (NJ2)

As a "photographer" (and "writer") I'm ever-concerned with fabricating reality. I fall hard on the journalistic side; studio photography doesn't interest me much, and I totally discount photographic trickery (except for using Photoshop to clone out the occasional distracting background element). But especially in my writing I'm tempted to distort and enhance, and maybe now I won't feel so bad about it.    (NJ3)

I enjoyed reading about Hurley's efforts to Get The Photo: putting a camera on a pole and climbing to the crow's nest, climbing out on the yard arm, always having his camera ready as he went about the ship. I understand the urge there and think his heart was in the right place. Also, our modern American standards of journalistic integrity hadn't been formulated yet.    (NJ4)

5/7
On August 22, 2004 10:14 PM Cooper said:

Huh - double-post problems today. I posted once and got a server error 500 (?) after several minutes delay, so posted again.    (NJ5)

- Cooper    (NJ6)

6/7
On August 30, 2004 01:25 PM mike said:

May I reccommend Vollmann's The Rifles? It treats of a failed expedition after the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, the Franklin Expedition. Like Shackleton, the expedition became icebound and over the course of a couple years starved to death. I don't recall if anyone made it out.    (NL1)

Vollman explores the expedition's interactions - and failures to interact - with the Nunavut and Inuit that were close enough to them to retain verbal memories of the expeditioneers today.    (NL2)

Sending...