Face to Face Polar Portraits Paperback [Paperback]

Huw Lewis Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2008

A lavish account of pioneering polar photography and modern portraiture, "Face to Face: Polar Portraits" brings together in a single volume both rare, unpublished treasures from the historic collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), University of Cambridge, 'face to face' with cutting-edge modern imagery from expedition photographer Martin Hartley.This unique book by Huw Lewis-Jones is the first to examine the history and role of polar exploration photography, and showcases the very first polar photographs of 1845 through to images from the present day. It features the first portraits of explorers, some of the earliest photographs of the Inuit, the first polar photographs to appear in a book, and rare images never before published from many of the Heroic-Age Antarctic expeditions. Almost all the historic imagery - daguerreotypes, magic lantern slides, glass plate negatives and images from private albums - that have been rediscovered during research for this book have never been before the public eye.Set within a 'gallery' of 100 double page-spreads are 50 of the world's finest historic polar portraits from the SPRI collection alternated with 50 modern-day images by Martin Hartley, who has captured men and women of many nations, exploring, working, and living in the Polar Regions today. Each gallery spread, dedicated to a single individual, gives a sense of the isolation and intense personal experience each 'face' has had in living or travelling through the polar wilderness, whether they be one of the world's greatest explorers, or a humble cook.In addition to this remarkable collection is a foreword written by Sir Ranulph Fiennes; a fascinating exploration into 'photography then' - the history of photography and its role in shaping our vision of the polar hero by historian and curator of art at SPRI, Dr Huw Lewis-Jones; a discussion between Dr Lewis-Jones and Martin Hartley about 'photography now', focusing on the essential role that photography plays in modern polar adventuring; and an afterword entitled 'The Boundaries of Light' by the best-selling author Hugh Brody.Does an explorer need to appear frostbitten and adventurous to be seen as heroic, and do we need faces like these to imagine their achievement?Sir John Franklin is the first. The sun is high. He adjusts his cocked hat, bound with black silk, and gathers up his telescope. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, positioned on the deck of the stout ship Erebus, as she wallows at her moorings in the London docks. It is 1845. The photographer, Richard Beard, urges the explorer to stay still for just a moment longer. He removes the lens cap, he waits, another minute, and then swiftly slots it back in place. The first polar photographic portrait is secured.Other senior officers of the exploration ships Erebus and Terror had their photographs taken that day, optimistic and ever hopeful. They appear to us now as if frozen in time. So too they followed Sir John Franklin as he led them in search of a navigable northwest passage, into the maze of islands and straits which forms the Canadian Arctic.'Mr Beard, at Franklin's request, supplied the expedition with a complete photographic apparatus, which was safely stowed aboard the well-stocked ship alongside other technological marvels: portable barrel-organs, tinned meat and soups, scientific equipment, the twenty-horse-power engines loaned from the Greenwich railway, and a library of over twelve hundred volumes. The camera now formed part of the kit thought essential to travel to the limits of the known world. Weighed down with stores, yet buoyant with Victorian confidence, the expedition sailed from the Thames on 19 May. The ships were last seen in late July, making their way northward in Baffin Bay, before vanishing without a trace - Huw Lewis-Jones,from the essay 'Photography Then' in "Face to Face".This title is available in both hardback and soft-cover. It features placement: photography, exploration, travel. It contains 288 pages in full-colour, including images that have never before been published. The South Pole was an awful place to be on 18 January 1912. Captain Scott and his four companions - Wilson, Bowers, Oates, and Evans - had just found that the Norwegian explorer Amundsen had beaten them to the prize one month earlier. The photograph that the men took that day speaks volumes for their achievement, of course, but there could be no truer record of their total disappointment. The men look absolutely broken; a photograph on top of everything else seems like a punishment. They are utterly devastated. A life's ambition has been snatched from their grasp. Now 800 miles from their base, they dragged themselves northward into the mouth of a raging blizzard. Their photographs and letters home, recovered with their bodies some time later, tell the sad tale of their sacrifice - Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this collection of photographs and portraits of explorers, Lewis-Jones provides us with a visual history of the men and women, the explorers and documentarians—Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Henry Shackleton, Mary Qulitalik—who studied and settled the most unforgiving regions of the world. Lewis-Jones brings together classic black-and-white images—stark glass-plate negatives, daguerreotypes, and magic lantern slides, some never before made public—from the Scott Polar Research Institute, and modern-day color portraits of people working and living in polar regions from renowned expedition photographer Martin Hartley. Images of ice-crusted faces, parka-covered heads, bleak landscapes of ice, and steely, determined gazes work with biographical information and commentary to tell the story of exploration and life, and give us a glimpse at the enduring spirit and curiosity that drove individuals to explore the furthest reaches of our planet. (Dec.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

AUTHOR DR HUW LEWIS-JONES is a historian and Curator of Art at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. Formerly Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and Curator of Imperial and Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum, London, Huw is also Research Curator of the FREEZE FRAME historic photography project and a consultant within media and broadcasting. PHOTOGRAPHER MARTIN HARTLEY specializes in documenting the most inaccessible parts of the planet. His commitment to capture the beauty of unadulterated landscapes and remote communities has taken him to some of the most challenging locations in the world. His work has been published in many major newspapers and magazines, including The Times, National Geographic. He has worked on 17 different polar expeditions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Polarworld (November 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0901021083
• ISBN-13: 978-0901021083
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,727,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frozen Men, November 16, 2008

By 

Russell A. Potter (Providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Face to Face Polar Portraits Hardback (Hardcover)

We all know the type: knit cap or fur-trimmed parka, frost-nipped cheeks, ice-encrusted beard, and those sharp, piercing eyes that have gazed upon trackless wilderness and seen the heart of darkness in a world of light. And yet with Face to Face: Polar Portraits, Scott Polar Research Institute curator Huw Lewis-Jones has managed the seemingly impossible: among these all-too-familiar images, he has gathered together a collection of polar portraits which makes this image anew, a hundred images whose particularity and difference leap forth from the printed pages. Yes, there is Tom Crean, iconic as ever, and there is Shackleton, brash and retiring all at once, but mixed in among them is an eclectic array of explorers and adventurers we have never known before, or have known but never seen in this light. Leaping from the oldest -- the iconic 1845 daguerreotype of Sir John Franklin with his cocked hat and telescope -- to the newest -- a 2008 photo of Trevor Potts, the only man to retrace Shackleton's legendary march -- Lewis-Jones assembles a panoply of portraiture that brings rich surprises at every turn of the page. Among my personal favorites are those of women, both explorers and the partners of explorers, in whose eyes there is a still more steely resolve, and yet a visible sorrow. Kathleen Scott, in a posture that might at first seem to convey repose, offers sustenance in her gaze and steadiness in her hand; it's little wonder that Robert Falcon Scott kept two versions of this portrait near at hand; Josephine Peary, in a peaked hood that lends a strange elfin character to her face, almost dares the photographer to make her flinch (and she of course would not!). There are also some striking and seldom-seen portraits of lesser-known Polar figures, such as John Powles Cheyne, whose Quixotic quest to reach the Pole by balloon was dubbed "balloonacy" by Punch; Stig Hallgren, the sole survivor of an ice-tractor crash, the outline of his snow-goggles almost tattooed upon his face by exposure; and Mary Qulitalik, whose portrayal of Niriuniq in the film Atanarjuat challenged stereotypical film images of Inuit people.

Lewis-Jones also contributes an excellent overview of the emergence of photography in the nineteenth century, and its enormous effect on the visual culture of the day, illustrated with period images and well-chosen cartoons, which alone would be more than worth the price of the book. The distinguished explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes adds a pithy introduction, and the book concludes with a discussion with photographic master Martin Hartley,reflects on the the challenges faced by polar photographers in the past, and gives thought-provoking insights both into his present practice, and the future of photography in the digital age. This is no ordinary coffee-table book; with its singular images, the high quality of their reproduction, and the rich array of historical contexts provided for every image, Face to Face is quite simply the most engaging collection of Polar portraiture ever assembled.