Exploration
For me, photography has always been about exploring.
I have always admired people who travel to distant places with their cameras, braving the elements in order to capture the perfect frame.
As a kid I loved watching Jacques Cousteau on television, traveling the seas of the World onboard the Calypso, and my imagination ran wild, reading the adventure novels of Jules Verne; “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” (1870) and “Around the World in Eighty Days” (1872).
From the beginning of time, mankind has always been fascinated with exploration and with the invention of the camera in 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, I can’t help but think how it must have felt, capturing historical events like the Moon landing or the first climb of Mount Everest, and documenting it with your camera.
A unique experience that rarely happens today where everything is interlinked.
I recall one of my own experiences as an explorer with a camera;
In October 2011 I traveled to Iceland with a crew of photographers and moviemakers to make “Outliers, Vol. I: Iceland” — documenting my first meeting with fellow photographer Tim Navis and our exploration of Iceland. For 10 days we traveled along the Ring Road, covering the entire 1.328 km around the island. Iceland was a visual grenade and the whole journey, still stands as one of the most powerful and emotional photographical experiences of my life.
Recently I came across an amazing photograph by Swedish photographer Axel Lindahl which inspired me to take a journey into the archives of some of the great explorers — with or without cameras.
Axel Lindahl
Axel Theodor Lindahl (1841—1906) was a Swedish photographer notable for his early photography of Norwegian landscapes. Unlike many of his fellow contemporary photographers who emphasized the dramatic nature of Norwegian landscapes, Lindahl sought in his composition the harmonious aesthetic of his subject matter.
Nils Olsson Reppen
Photographer Nils Olsson Reppen was born in 1856 on the farm Reppen in Sogndal in western Norway. In 1882, Nils Olsson Reppen immigrated to America and worked as a photographer in Browns Valley and Morris in Minnesota. He returned to Norway in the late 1800´s and continued to work as a photographer in Sogndal, the village where he was born. Nils lived until 1925.
Nils Olsson Reppen is said to have had two periods where he lived in the USA. The first time he moved to USA was in 1882. The second time was in 1895. In 1898, he moved back to Sogndal and lived in Tårnhuset in Sogndalsfjøra.
In 1965, Tårnhuset burned down to the ground and most of his glass plate negatives were lost. There are 424 negatives left from Reppen, they are stored at Fylkesarkivet in Vestland. Vik Lokalhistoriske Arkiv also have some of Nils Olsson Reppen´s photographies.
The pictures which is presented below is mainly from the nature, the farms, the mountain farms, the fjords and the villages in the Sognefjord area around year 1900.
All the pictures are downloaded from Fylkesarkivet in Vestland´s album about Nils Olsson Reppen at Flickr.
(Text and photos from Fjords)
Belgian Antarctic Expedition
The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897—1899 was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region. Led by Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery aboard the RV Belgica, it was the first Belgian Antarctic expedition and is considered the first expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Among its members were Frederick Cook, surgeon, anthropologist and photographer and Roald Amundsen, 1st mate — explorers who would later attempt the respective conquests of the North and South Poles.
Failing to find a way into the Weddell Sea on 28 February 1898, Gerlache's expedition became trapped in the ice of the Bellinghausen Sea, near Peter I Island. The Belgica expedition was poorly equipped and did not have enough winter clothing for every man on board.
By January 1899, Belgica was still trapped in ice about seven feet (2.1 m) thick and the possibility of another winter in the ice seemed real. Open water was visible about half a mile away and Cook suggested that trenches be cut to the open water to allow Belgica to escape the ice. The weakened crew used the explosive tonite and various tools to create the channel. Finally, on 15 February 1899, they managed to start slowly down the channel they had cleared during the weeks before. It took them nearly a month to cover seven miles (11 km), and on 14 March, they cleared the ice. The expedition returned to Antwerp on 5 November 1899.
Onboard Belgica was also Norwegian seaman Adam Tollefsen. Tollefsen later went insane during the expedition because of scurvy and the polar night. He never recovered and died shortly after.
(Text from Wikipedia)
Herbert Ponting
Herbert Ponting was already a world travelling, pioneering photographer and travel writer when, in 1909, he met British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868—1912). Impressed with Ponting’s credentials and manner, Scott asked him to document his expedition to the South Pole – the most elusive prize of exploration at that time.
Ponting had already freelanced his way around the world, photographing China, India, Japan, Spain, the Alps and the USA. At the age of 40, Ponting joined the Terra Nova crew to embark on an academic voyage to Antarctica, becoming the first professional photographer to join a polar expedition.
One hundred years later, it remains imprinted in the public’s consciousness – the race to reach the pole before rival Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Tragically, Scott missed his mark by one month and despite Herculean efforts, perished with four members of his party on the return trip during a ferocious blizzard.
Scott was destined never to return from Antarctica, but Ponting did and with him a great many still photographs as well as motion pictures.
Others have immortalized in words the heroism of Scott’s doomed venture, but Herbert Ponting’s cameras recorded for the world the actual appearance of the explorers — of their way of life, and of that “thrilling region of thick ribbed ice” through which they struggled so gallantly and so vainly.
Ponting was a photographic pioneer-adventurer whose photographs were taken often at great risk and always with primitive equipment. He was not only an exceptional photographer; he was also an extraordinary writer – abundantly visual and acutely insightful. His account documents Scott’s spectacular failure but, equally important, records a firsthand perspective of the experiences of those who, like Ponting, stayed on the Terra Nova base camp. They faced the same brutal landscapes and subzero temperatures as Scott and the same perils. During this adventure, Ponting himself was attacked by eight Killer Whales.
Through his dramatic images, Ponting invites the viewer to encounter the legendary expedition with an intimacy and immediacy available in no other visual experience. These images reveal Ponting not only as one of the world’s great pioneers, but also as one of the great masters of the camera.
Herbert Ponting’s monumental photographs of the barren vastness of endless ice, stand as a timeless, universal and beautiful emblem of human endeavour. Against the dramatic backdrop of Antarctica, they remain, without doubt, an incredible record of one of the greatest adventures and exploration stories of all time.
(Text and photos from Elliott Gallery)
That’s it for this newsletter!
If you have any suggestions for interviews, features, topics, interesting work or books that I should check out, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Keep shooting and stay safe.
Kim