photography in extreme conditions

Great images rarely give the appearance of being difficult to take, or betray the effort and risk involved. But the stories behind them may be extraordinary, adding to their aura of significance and value.

Complex processes and cumbersome equipment made the achievements of 19th-century photographers particularly remarkable; Fenton in the Crimea, for example, G. W. Wilson in the Scottish Highlands, the Bisson brothers in the Alps, and Samuel Bourne in the Himalayas created superb images in daunting environments. Tenacity, skill, the contribution of assistants, and luck all played their part.

In the 20th century, the Australian Frank Hurley was the ultimate adventure photographer, prepared to go to any lengths to get a photograph. On Shackleton's Endurance Expedition of 1914-17, he constantly and literally threw himself into perilous situations. In his diary, he recounted how he would balance on ice floes to photograph the moving ship, and sometimes had to throw himself and his camera out of her path. He spent hours in the Antarctic darkness preparing to take the now famous nocturnal picture of the Endurance lit by magnesium flash. Later he risked his life to salvage his glass negatives from the crushed and sinking vessel. Other extreme photographic exploits include the marine photography of Alan Villiers and Eric Newby in the 1920s and 1930s, Colonel L. V. S. Blacker's pioneering flight over Everest in April 1933, and the work of astronauts in space and on the moon.

Natural hazards are legion. Cold can solidify lubricants, freeze metal to skin, deplete batteries, and cause film to become brittle and break. High temperatures melt film emulsions and the cement in lens assemblies. Humidity propagates fungus; salt and sand scour glass and jam components. Although modern materials and manufacturing techniques (e.g. sealing) have reduced these problems, increasing use of electronic, battery-dependent cameras, and the ever greater demands made especially on sports and expedition photographers have created new ones. Survival in the field requires an array of kit, from portable hairdryers to brushes, tape, and plastic bags. Extreme measures may be needed in order to keep going: in the 2003 Iraq War, for example, photographers buried their digital cameras under the sand to protect them from the desert heat. (Wilfred Thesiger, however, exploring the Empty Quarter of Arabia in the late 1940s, had kept his Leica safe in a simple goatskin bag.)

Conflict and crime create other perils. In 1866, near Fort Kearney in Montana Territory, the photographer Ridgway Glover was killed and scalped by Sioux Indians. Once technology made close-action war photography possible, photographers became casualties. Pictures of the Pacific War (1941-5), and Robert Capa's D-Day images, set an enduring pattern. Photographs of the intifada in Palestine, township violence in South Africa, and the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York were made in equally life-threatening conditions. Meanwhile, tourism was taking photographers to places where annual incomes might be lower than the value of a couple of cameras. Parts of many Western cities are dangerous environments for photography. In such conditions, the visitor must either camouflage his equipment with paint or masking tape, or exchange it for single-use cameras, or revert to sketchbook and diary.

— Joanna Wright

Bibliography

• also exploration photography; mountain photography; underground photography; underwater photography.
• Hurley, F., Argonauts of the South (1925).
• Hunt, J., Our Everest Adventure (1954).
• Life Library of Photography: Special Problems (1972)