Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History (2004 TV Movie) User Reviews

A compact biog pleasing to amateur and pro photographers.

[david-mcmillan-1 · 13 January 2005]

Australian photographer Frank Hurley was more than a mere recorder of images. The "making history" of the title refers to some darkroom manipulation that some view as a corruption of the event, while others appreciate the addition of editorial narrative, even in Hurley's glass-plate stills. Interviews with historians and Hurleys inheritors provide the somewhat opposing views. The narration in English is perhaps too doubting in delivery despite the even, journalistic text. Sharp presentation and atmospheric editing make the Hurley documentary the first connection for a wide audience probably familiar with Hurley's iconic photographs.It is in these images rather than the investigation of supposed re-staging of historical events Antarctica that elevate "Hurley" to top-level TV biographical history.

Hurley: Camera artist or fraudster?

[kima-6 · 8 February 2006]

I recently watched a one-hour documentary about celebrated Australian photographer Frank Hurley. Hurley had been famous for documenting Shackleton's doomed 1914 trip to Antarctica. His film footage of a blizzard on an earlier trip is seminal in the history of photography - often considered one of the first documentaries. His work helped people realise the power of photographs through his images of great events from the 20th century, but it was revealed that some of his stunning photos were elaborate concoctions and others were outright fakes. He was a conjurer with a camera. Dramatic skies were added in later, for example, and scenes were reenacted when he had missed them on film. The rescue shot is another example of his forgery - it was actually a shot of Capt. Morsley leaving them to go find help, not his return shot.

For Hurley: "Photos should reflect a different truth." He portrayed the struggle between man and nature and man and man and was telling the oldest myth of all: the hero's journey. He was a camera artist versus a pure documentarian. He melded art and history with his thick 10 x 8 glass negatives. Interestingly, they found this phrase written into his Antarctic darkroom "near enough is not good enough." His work raised serious questions about whether photography had to tell the truth exactly and what place photo art could play in documenting truth.

Soon after in his career, he was sent to Palestine. During battle there, he complained that "shells will not burst when required." Because he couldn't get the shots he wanted, he made composites from his negatives. Was this historical painting rather then photography? Purist photographers and historians were horrified and he clashed with his supervisor, who was a zealous objective dismayed at what a showman Hurley was. Even his diaries were written with an audience in mind.

Hurley destroyed and manipulated things so much that in Papua New Guinea, him and zoologist companion McClough were investigated for being anthropological pirates. Not long after, McClough committed suicide from all the undue public attention on their dubious methods. Oddly cute in the film are the interviews with Hurley's elderly identical twin daughters, Adelie and Toni, in matching outfits as they journey to Antartica in their father's footsteps. Adelie was Australia's first female press photography, with no credit to her absent father.

Later in his life, Hurley worked on quite a number of studio films set in the jungles, the Antarctic and finally, he worked to promote Australia. Except his images of Australia were sanitised idealised versions aimed at selling "migration to Australia" to foreigners: not an Aborigine in sight in his images. They were very propagandist and nationalistic. His manipulation had matured so that simply by leaving things out, editing out what he didn't want people to see, he created as much of an effect as his early techniques of photo composites.