Images from the fragile original glass plates have been taken and digitised so people can see them online.
Professional photographer Herbert Ponting took the pictures while on Scott's Terra Nova mission to explore Antarctica.
It ended in disaster when Scott and his men died in March 1912 returning from the South Pole.
The seemingly candid portraits shed light on the everyday tasks that expedition members were required to perform, such as mending a dog harness, cooking, working in the laboratory and examining a catch of fish.
In reality the images, which have been largely locked away for almost a century, were carefully posed.
Heather Lane, librarian and keeper of the archives at the Scott Polar Reasearch Institute (SPRI), said Ponting often had to get expedition members to hold a pose for minutes at a time because he did not have the benefit of a flash.
"The pictures are very much staged," said Mrs Lane.
"It was a standing joke that they often had to keep still for a long time for him. The crew actually invented a verb for it – 'to Pont'."
The pictures are among 1,700 taken by Ponting held by the SPRI in Cambridge.
He took them using a camera which exposed a seven-inch-by-five glass plate, which gave a resolution equivalent to a 54 megapixel camera.
They have been kept in cool, dark conditions for decades to slow their inevitable decay.
Mrs Lane said: "In some the enamel is starting to lift but on the whole they are in extremely good condition."
The Ponting collection is part of a 100,000-strong picture archive held by the SPRI, covering expeditions from 1845 to 1982.
The institute has just been given £420,000 of Government money to put the first 20,000 online, to safeguard the images from deterioration and enable wider access. The project, called Freeze Frame goes live on March 4.
Explaining why it was important to put them online now, Mrs Lane said: "It is getting more difficult to reproduce prints from the negatives as the technology disappears.
"The Scott photos are the most incredible records of that ill-fated expedition. We are the national memorial to Scott and his companions.
"It is incredibly important the public can share that heritage."
The project was paid for by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a Government-funded body set up to improve the use of information technology in higher education. To date Freeze Frame has taken two years and cost £420,000.
Polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes said: "These photos are a huge part of our polar heritage."
Source: Telegraph
No comments:
Post a Comment