The Heart of the Great Alone

In 1910 there were no outer space-reaching rockets. The Wright brothers were still figuring out how to keep their new-fangled flying machine in the air for more than five minutes, so the moon was the last thing on anyone’s mind. But this isn’t to say that there wasn’t a shiny white surface that countries raced towards in the hope of sticking a flag into. 2010 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Terra Nova expedition, the three-year race to the South Pole by British explorer Captain Scott and his party who would all perish in bleak, bone-chilling conditions of the unforgiving variety. Four years later, Scott’s former colleague Ernest Shackleton left on a polar expedition that would take three years due to his ship Endurance being stuck between ice caps, but frostbitten fingers aside at least he came home alive.

Herbert George Ponting was the first professional photographer to go on an arctic expedition when he snapped the treacherous atmospheres of the Terra Nova expedition, while 23-year-old photographer Frank Hurley on his first paid assignment caught Shackleton’s journeys. Both the works are now on display at a new exhibition in Edinburgh.

The Heart of the Great Alone exhibition is at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh – It runs until April 11

Arctic - Herbert Ponting, Grotto in an iceberg, 5 January 1911 - Royal Collection (c) 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II