Frank Hurley was an Australian photographer, filmmaker and adventurer, who worked in exotic places and hostile environments. Hurley’s striking images captured the magic and power of Antarctica.
Background
Ethnicity:
His father was born in Lancashire, and his mother was of French descent.
Frank Hurley was born on October 15, 1885 in Sydney, Australia. He was a son of Edward Harrison Hurley, a printer and trade union official, and Margaret Hurley.
Education
Initially, Frank attended Glebe Public School. Later, at the age of thirteen, he ran away from home to work on the Lithgow steel mill, returning home two years later to study at the local technical school. Hurley also attended the University of Sydney.
He learned photography from Harry Cave around 1905.
In his early years, Frank Hurley became interested in photography. At the age of seventeen, he bought his first camera, a 15-shilling Kodak Box Brownie. In 1905, Frank joined Harry Cave in a postcard business in Sydney and began to earn a reputation for the high technical quality of his work and for the extravagant risks he took to secure sensational images, such as a famous shot, taken from the rails in front of an onrushing train. During that time, the photographer gave talks at photographic club meetings and in 1910, he held the first exhibition of his work in Sydney.
In 1911, Hurley was invited by Sir Douglas Mawson to be an official photographer on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. During the period from December 1911 to March 1913, Frank worked enthusiastically under arduous conditions, taking both still photographs and movie films, and his high spirits made him a popular and valued member of the team. Upon his return to Sydney, he rapidly assembled his movie footage and successfully presented it to the public in August as "Home of the Blizzard". In October 1914, Frank joined another Antarctic expedition, which he ended in November 1916.
Hurley's fame grew rapidly and he was commissioned by Francis Birtles to film an expedition by car through northern Australia. Early in 1917, he briefly visited South Georgia to secure additional scenes to complete his film, entitled "In the Grip of Polar Ice".
In 1918 in Sydney, Hurley worked hard to arrange exhibitions of his photographs and to give lecture tours with his films to great public acclaim and commercial success. In December 1919, he was invited to join the pioneer aviator, Sir Ross Smith, on the final stage of the historic flight from England to Australia. During that flight, Hurley got a great opportunity to film Australia from the air.
During the period from December 1920 to January 1923, Frank was on filming expedition to the Torres Strait Islands and Papua. His Papuan films, especially "Pearls and Savages", were major commercial successes. In 1925, the photographer wasn't allowed to enter Papua to make a fiction film for the Australian-born magnate of the British film industry, Sir Oswald Stoll, as he had tense relationship with Sir Hubert Murray and the Papuan administration over allegedly bad publicity, that he was giving to the territory through his sensational stories of head-hunters and unexplored jungle wilds and more seriously over allegedly improper methods, used to gather a large collection of artefacts for the Australian Museum.
In 1927, Hurley worked as pictorial editor for The Sun newspaper in Sydney. Two years later, in 1929, he joined the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition again under Mawson's command.
Between 1930-1931, Frank showed his two films "Southward ho with Mawson" and "Siege of the South" widely in Australia. Also, throughout the 1930's, the photographer spent more time with his family. At that period of time, he worked as a cameraman on four feature films at the Cinesound studio. Some time later, Cinesound appointed Hurley a head of a special documentary unit to produce films for government and private sponsors.
During World War II, Hurley served as official photographer with the Australian Imperial Force in the Middle East, where he remained until 1946, making documentary films for the British government. Upon his return to Australia, he concentrated on still photography and published several books of photographs of Australian landscapes and city portraits. At that time, Frank also acted as a journalist and gave lectures. Although, he was busy almost all the time, he continued traveling until his death in 1962.