Playing Up To Camera

Newcastle Herald

Friday August 5, 2005

BY MICHAEL GADD

THE images of Australian

photographer Frank Hurley ? of

the first Antarctic explorers, world

wars, brutal landscapes and mysterious

natives in the jungles of Papua New

Guinea ? have captured the imagination

of all who have seen them.

But his images, although brilliant

and bravely caught, involved some

artistic licence.

Written and directed by journalist

Simon Nasht, Frank Hurley: The Man

Who Made History provides one of

the few accounts of the man to go

beyond hero worship.

Hurley, whose career began in

1911, was a brave adventurer and

photographer, keen to tell tales of

human triumph over adversity. But he

was also a conjurer, who combined

his photographs with innovative

technical manipulations to suit his

dramatic storylines. It still incites bitter

conflict among historical purists.

When Nasht?s film aired on the

BBC, the director said it attracted an

unexpected degree of public interest.

?It wasn?t because of the film,?

Nasht says. ?The week the show

was to air the Daily Mirror editor

Piers Morgan was sacked for doctoring

photos from Iraqi prisons.?

?What people were talking about

as a modern phenomenon then had

been going on forever, since the start

of moving pictures anyway, since

Frank Hurley.?

These days digital manipulation

is commonplace. Two recent gossip

magazines ran images of Bec

Cartwright and Lleyton Hewitt. One

published images from the couple?s

wedding day. The other used a

picture of the pair from the Logies,

with Cartwright?s colourful dress

replaced by a wedding gown.

?In an age where Big Brother is

considered reality, you?d wonder if

anyone cares any more,? Nasht says.

Nasht describes Hurley as a true

Australian original.

He describes Hurley?s 86-year-old

twin daughters, Adele and Tony,

keepers of their father?s legacy, in

the same breath as heroes history

tends to overlook.

Adele, who lives with her sister in

Coffs Harbour, describes her father

as ?a stranger who visited?.

But there is a part of their father in

both of them; they have themselves

travelled to all seven continents.

Tony, who had a successful career as

an occupational therapist among other

things, has been to the Antarctic seven

times, once more than her father.

Although her father?s equipment

permeated every room, Tony had

no interest in photography.

But Adele became Australia?s first

football fields and taipanhunting

in the outreaches

of Australia to floods in Fiji

and the battlefields of the

world.

?It?s a funny thing, he

didn?t teach me a damn

thing,? Adele says. ?He

was never there.?

Adele proudly told TV

Magazine she snagged

her first front page in the

second week of her first job at a

major Sydney newspaper when she

was 18 years old.

?I guess I inherited his instinct,?

she says.

Hurley?s most famous works

came from the expeditions of Ernest

Shackleton, in the form of groundbreaking

documentaries and

far-fetched heroic narratives.

During the next three years, his

images of those Antarctic voyages

would become the most viewed

photographic exhibition in history.

Hurley was a one-man band; on

the rare occasions he was at home

he would be in his darkroom or cutting

films before the next adventure.

Hurley was never apologetic

for his controversial photographic

embellishments or for neglecting his

opera singer wife and daughters.

?He never tried to hide what were

composite images,? Nasht says. ?He

always considered himself an artist and

the camera his tool. He always knew

the images would become the history.?

FRANK HURLEY: THE MAN WHO MADE HISTORY, SUNDAY, 7.30PM, ABC

© 2005 Newcastle Herald

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