Photographs by Frank Hurley

Frank Hurley was the photographer on the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole and then went on to accompany Anzac 3 Div at the Battle of Messines, where he took some remarkable photographs of the battlefield.

Hurley felt that his pictures did not capture the full horror of the things he had seen so manipulated images, creating composites of scenes. Some thought this was clearly wrong but others feel it was an appropriate artistic response to the war.

An new exhibition at Charleston Farm outside Lewes in Sussex addresses this issue and displays a number of his images.

http://www.charleston.org.uk/visit/gallery.html

Charleston has its own Great War heritage of a kind in that the Bloomsbury Set holed up there to avoid zeppelin attacks and to be pacifists. Meanwhile the nearby Firle Place was used as a hospital for Australian troops.

You can see Hurley pictures on the AWM website:

http://www.awm.gov.au/captured/official/hurley.asp

You can also find examples elsewhere on this blog where they are accompanied by photos of the archaeology, landscape and team inspired by Hurley's work and taken by Ian, our own photographer, who was using a plate camera, just like Hurley's own.