Twenty thousand images - spanning 150 years of polar exploration from Franklin and Scott to Sir Ranulph Fiennes – were this week made freely available by Cambridge University to people across the globe.
 

‘Freeze Frame’, the project undertaken by the University’s Scott Polar Research Institute, has painstakingly digitised more than 20,000 images of the Arctic and Antarctic held in its rich, but fragile archive.

Featuring the expeditions of Sir John Franklin, Captain Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton and their modern counterparts, the digital archive will provide a fascinating insight into the beauty and privations of life at the Poles; from the ‘heroic age’ of exploration to Fiennes’ Transglobe Expedition of the 1980s.

To launch Freeze Frame, Fiennes – who last year donated his Transglobe archive to SPRI – has chosen some of his favourite images from the vast collection, including several from his epic expedition.

He said: “My first reaction on encountering this collection is - how to choose from the wealth of polar images presented by Freeze Frame? This is an extraordinary collection, filled with remarkable images. However, certain things stand out for me, as potent reminders of polar exploration.

“I am delighted that the photographs from our Transglobe Expedition (1979-82) form part of this collection. Our ship Benjamin Bowring, reaching the North Pole, Bothie the dog and the frozen jeans being just a few of the images that we can now share with the world.”

Heather Lane, Librarian and Keeper of the Archives at SPRI, said: “The Ponting photographs are the most vivid records of Scott’s final expedition. As the national memorial to Scott and his companions, we believe that it is vitally important the public should share this heritage.

“The archive presents all of the negatives we hold from twenty-five separate expeditions. There are many more in our collections still to be made accessible and many photographic prints which we would also love to digitise.

“We hope people from around the world will visit Freeze Frame, either for research or for general interest, and will enjoy the richness of this visual archive of polar photography.”

The earliest photos in the collection were, fittingly, the last to be digitised at the Institute to reach the project’s 20,000 image target. Featuring daguerreotypes of Sir John Franklin’s doomed ‘lost expedition’ in 1845, the only known portraits of Franklin and his crew provide a moving tribute to the heroism of their endeavours.

Later photos from the collection show the sometimes crushing mundanity of life for crew members as they mend clothing, cut their hair and fix dog harnesses.

From March 4, visitors to the website www.freezeframe.ac.uk, will be able to view thousands of rarely-seen images, including glass plate negatives from the 1910-13 British Antarctic Expedition. These are now so fragile that they will never be publically displayed. Website visitors can also read extracts from diaries, expedition reports, letters and personal papers of expedition members.

The Freeze Frame project has won the backing of current polar explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Pen Hadow, who is currently leading the Catlin Arctic Survey to determine the current state of the Arctic sea ice.

He said: “The Freeze Frame archive is invaluable in charting changes in the polar regions. Making the material available to all will help with further research into scientific studies around global warming and climate change.”

Added Fiennes: “These photos are a huge part of our polar heritage. I congratulate the Scott Polar Research Institute for its vision in bringing Freeze Frame to the widest audience.”

The process of digitising this remarkable archive has also thrown up some extraordinary challenges for the small, but dedicated team working on the project since 2007.

Some of the photos and plates in the collection were so badly damaged or cracked that they have had to be digitally restored and enhanced using state-of-the-art equipment.

Funding for the work has come from JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee.
 

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