The University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute has acquired Herbert Ponting’s exceptional photographs of the Antarctic, taken on Scott’s last, fateful expedition.
The University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute has acquired Herbert Ponting’s exceptional photographs of the Antarctic, taken on Scott’s last, fateful expedition.
Over 1,000 original glass-plate negatives of the photographs taken during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic from 1910-1912 will be housed at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University.
The Institute has been awarded a grant of over half a million pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to enable the purchase. Without the grant, there is a good chance that the collection could have gone abroad or into a private collection.
The photographs, taken by photographer Herbert Ponting who travelled with Scott to the Antarctic, are some of the best-known images of the Southern continent ever produced. They capture not only the splendour of the Antarctic environment and the hardships of early exploration, but also the day-to-day life of the expedition and its members and the innovative scientific work that they undertook.
The Herbert Ponting archive comprises a unique collection of the original glass-plate negatives of these photographs, stored in the original wooden boxes that Ponting used to carry them back from the expedition.
Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said:
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