Antarctica | A Group Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: January 14 – February 11, 2006

Our annual thematic group exhibition, ANTARCTICA, explores this hostile region through the eyes of three photographers: Frank Hurley; Joan Myers and Herbert G. Ponting.

ANTARCTICA features some of the most well-known and enduring images of the Antarctic by 2 famous individuals: Herbert Ponting (1870-1935), the official photographer for Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913; and Frank Hurley (1885-1962), photographer for Ernest Shackleton’s expedition that started aboard the Endurance, which set sail from England in 1914. This exhibition features vintage photographs as well as limited-edition modern prints from the original negatives by the Royal Geographic Society, for whom we represent this work in Canada.

We also see this mythic landscape through the lens of Joan Myers (American, b. 1944) who spent four months photographing scientific study and daily life in the world's "most hostile continent", as a recipient of an Antarctic Artists and Writers Grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs in 2002.  Myers spent October 2002 through January 2003 based at the McMurdo Station, an American research facility built in the 1950s. Her large-format colour photographs offer a spectacular modern-day view of Antarctica. Her work has been honoured by the Smithsonian Institute through its production of a solo exhibition titled “Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey”, opening in Washington, D.C. in May 2006. It will then embark on a 15-venue national tour through the spring of 2010. A full-colour companion book complements this work and will be published by Harper Collins for release in February 2006.