British seasonal weather, you’ve got to love it! Despite the conditions being somewhat confusing over the past couple of months, much to our dismay, winter has finally decided to show us what it is made of.
Although the dark mornings, frozen windscreens and bitter winds are temporary for us Brits, a story proclaimed as history’s most famous ‘Successful Failure’ is enough to make you hibernate inside your duvet cover.
Gary Jones, our Wolverhampton showroom manager was invited as a guest of Rolex to visit the ‘Enduring Eye’ Exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington last week.
Rolex, as a corporate benefactor of the RGS held an evening exhibiting the photographs taken by Frank Hurley during the ‘Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition’ in 1914.
Explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton and 27 other men, including the Australian photographer Hurley set out to make what they hoped would be the first land crossing of Antarctica.
Unfortunately, the crew had hardly reached the continent when their ship, ‘Endurance’ became trapped in the ice. For nearly 17 months, all 28 men survived the treacherous conditions as they embarked on a desperate trek back to civilization.
During this time Hurley chronicled the devastation of the ship in incredible detail, capturing the oblique, remote surroundings and the everyday life of the adventurers and survivors.
The exhibition bought back to life the hard work and traumas the group encountered. Gary, a keen photographer himself was enthralled at the quality of the photographs considering the equipment that was available to Hurley at that time.
Nearly 100 years to the day of the ship sinking, the Royal GeographicSociety has mounted the Enduring Eye: The Antarctic Legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley with each photograph of the expedition acting as both a testament to Shackleton’s ability to lead and will to survive, as well as to Hurley’s contribution to world of photography.https://www.rgs.org/about/our-collections/enduring-eye/
By Charlotte Skinner