The heart of the great alone

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


Frank Hurley, The return of the sun, 1915 - Royal Collection (c) 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II





Herbert Ponting, The ramparts of Mount Erebus, 1911 - Royal Collection (c) 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II



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


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.