Figure 1 – Frederick Cook’s fraudulant photograph of his attainment of the summit of Mount McKinley in 1906.This location is now known as “Fake Peak.” From the Wikicommons and in the public domain.

We’ve spoken about both sophisticated and unsophisticated photographic fakes.  But it’s important to remember that sometimes there’s no photographic slight of hand to it.  Sometimes a fraud is just a fraud.  Case in point is Frederick Cook’s (1865-1940) photograph of his “successful”  ascent of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.  Besides claiming the first successful climb of Mount McKinley, Cook also claimed, to have reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908, a full year before Peary.  As discussed in yesterday’s blog, both claims are now disputed.

Cook was a physician and explorer.  He was a founding member of two New York both the Arctic Club (1894–1913) and the Explorers Club (1904–present). Dr. Cook was, in fact, the second President of the prestigious Explorers Club.

Cook claimed to have reached the summit of Mount McKinley on  September 1906, which would have made him the first person to do so.  After his claim to the North Pole came into question in 1909, his climb of Mount McKinley also came under scrutiny. Ed Barrill, Cook’s sole companion during the ascent signed an affidavit saying that they never reached the top.

Two modern climbers, Bradford Washburn and Brian Okonek, made it their mission to discredit Cook’s claim.  Between 1956 and 1995 they were able to identify the locations from which most of Cook’s photographs of the ascent were taken.  In 1997 Robert M. Bryce Bryce identified  the locations of the additional photographs, including his “summit” photograph, shown here as Figure 1.  This location, now known as “False Peak,” is approximately twelve miles from the summit and three miles below it.

The point of all of this is that you don’t necessarily need to manipulate images to create a fake.  You just need the imagination to do so and a lot of wishful thinking on the part of your viewer.  And if what I read on the social media is correct, as one false image after another is circulated, wishful thinking is bountiful.

Figure 1 – Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel and Oscar Wisting (l–r) at the South Pole standing before “Polheim”, the tent erected at the South Pole on 16 December 1911. Photograph by Olav Bjaaland, the fifth team member. Originally published in Amundsen’s “The South Pole.” From the Wikicommons and in the public domain.

All this discussion about great South Polar photographers begs the question what was the first photograph taken at the South Pole?  It was not taken by either Herbert Ponting or Frank Hurley.  But I get ahead of myself.

The English polar explorers were unquestionably leaders in scientific exploration.  But if you wanted results, namely the achievement of a goal, the Norwegians were a force.  And most formidable among them was Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (1872 – 1928).  By 1910, Amundsen has already led the first expedition to successfully traverse, the until then fabled, Northwest Passage across Canada between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (1903-1906).  One of our readers has commented how often a polar expedition has come to be labeled as ill-fated.  Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition (1910-1912) was anything but ill-fated.  It’s story is both legendary and remarkable.

After his Norrthwest Passage Expedition, Amundsen set his eyes on the North Pole.  He organized his North Polar Expedition and June 3, 1910, he set sail from Oslo. His ship was the famous Fram, previously used by another great Norwegian polar explorer, Fridtjof Nansen.  Amundsen learned that in 1909 two Americans, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, separately claimed to have reached the North Pole.  At Medeira, he revealed to his crew his audacious plan.  The North Pole had already been claimed; they would head South.  And he sent a simple telegram to Scott:

"BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC--AMUNDSEN."

They reached  the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf on 14 January 1911, where Amundsen established basecamp. Amundsen adopted Eskimo-style skin clothing, instead of the wool clothing worn by the English.  He used skis and dog-sleds.  He was an expert logistical planner.  In Amundsen’s own assessment in his book “The South Pole:”

“I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the
expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen,
and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who
has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for
him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is
called bad luck.”

Amundsen’s team, consisting of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting, and Amundsen himself, departed on October 19, 1911, with four sledges and fifty-two dogs. On December 14, 1911, the team neared the pole.  Amundsen’s men held back in favor of their leader.  There should be no doubt who was the first man to obtain the “The Great Southern Nail.”  They arrived more than a month before Scott and his team. They left a small tent and letter stating
their accomplishment.  This was just in case they did not return safely home.  They returned to basecamp with eleven dogs, and their great success was announced on March 7, 1912 when they arrived at Hobart, Australia.

As I said, Amundsen was single minded in his attack on the Pole.  There was no science only committment and exploration.  They are known to have taken few photographs of the event.  Figure 1 shows the men standing before the Norwegian Flag on the tent that they left at the pole.

As a curious side note,  in 1926 Amundsen was among sixteen men who made the North polar crossing  in the dirgible “Norge.”   There had been three previous claims to the North Pole: that of Frederick Cook in 1908; of Robert Peary in 1909; and of Richard E. Byrd in 1926.  All of these are all disputed, either because of questionable accuracy in navigation or because of outright fraud.  As a result, it may well be the case that Amundsen was also among the first group of men to attain the North Pole.

Unfortunately, in the end, Amundsen was indeed ill-fated.  He disappeared on June 18, 1928 while flying on a rescue mission looking for missing members of the Nobile’s crew, whose airship had crashed, while returning from the North Pole.  In 2004 and again 2009  the Royal Norwegian Navy unsuccessfully searched with an unmanned submarine for the wreckage of Amundsen’s plane.

Figure 1 – Herbert Ponting’s “Sled dog listening to gramophone, 1910.” From the Wikicommons and in the public domain.

There is another Ponting image that I believe is very telling, and it is shown in Figure 1.  The image is of one of the sled dogs listening intently to a recording being play on a gramophone.  People of my generation will remember the RCA Victor Record Label (Figure 2) with some fondness.  We thought that we were at the height of technology, but really weren’t.  Indeed, there was always the sense that we were moving toward something wonderful and unknown.

Figure 2 – The RCA Victor record label not copywritten and in the public domain.

So we have to look at Ponting’s “dog and gramophone” and realize that the image was taken on a glass plate negative barely a century ago.  When you went to the Antarctic in those days you were totally cut off from the world. There was no radio contact with the outside world. Indeed the trapped members of the Shackleton Trans-antarctic Expedition didn’t even know the details of the horrible World War, which nearly halted them in England.

It is tempting to say something cliché like “that dog and gramophone represents a transitional point in technological history.”  However, the fact is that every point in time represents a transitional point in technological history.  We are as separated from the next century as Scott and Ponting were from us.  Indeed, given the exponential growth rate of technology, perhaps, we are more so.  It’s a marvelous thought.

You might question the word “marvelous.”  But it is the right word.  Technology is marvelous because it has consistently increased inter-human communication, even inter-species communication.  And we all get a little thrill at the idea that our technology may some day enable us to communicate with other beings from other worlds.  Technology pushes the boundaries of our knowledge ever outward.

Sometimes it is tempting to talk about the evils of technology.  However, technology is not intrinsically good or evil.  As Shakespeare* pointing out that fault is in ourselves.  Science and technology intrinsically increase human choices and possibilities.  If we make the choice to be underlings, that fault is in ourselves not in our technology.

*”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Julius Caesar, Act 1, scene 2.

Figure 1 – Herbert Ponting’s “Ice Grotto”. From Wikicommons and in the public domain.

I cannot mention Frank Hurley without also discussing the other great early twentieth century English Antarctic Photographer, Herbert George Ponting FRGS (1870-1935).  Ponting was photogarpher and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910-1913).

Scott achieved the Pole only to find the tent erected by Roald Amundsen‘s Norwegian Expedition.  His team died tragically on the return journey and were eventually found frozen in their tent, having suffered severely from scurvy.

Born in England, the son of a banker, Ponting emigrated to California where he married Mary Biddle Elliot and bought a fruit ranch.  After the ranch failed, Ponting took up free-lance photography and photographed the Russo-Japanese War.  He published his photographs “In Lotus Land Japan,” which led to his being elected to the Royal Geographical Society.  This in turn lead to his being signed on by Scott for the Terra Nova Expedition.

Figure 1 – Herbert Ponting “Robert Falcon Scott in Winter Camp.” Image from the Wikicommons and in the public domain.

In the Antarctic he took outstanding images on glass plates (despite the availability of film) including autochrome plates. To me his most memorable image is “Ice Grotto,” Figure 1.  He also took wonderful flash photographs of expedition members in their hut.  Figure 2 is such a photograph of Scott.

Scott’s death was legendary and a result, after World War I, Ponting published a book of his Antarctic photographs “The Great White South” in 1921.  He also produced two documentary films about the Terra Nova Expedition: “The Great White Silence,” a silent film in 1921 and “Ninety Degrees South” a film with sound in 1933.  Ponting died two years later in 1935.