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Herbert Ponting (1870-1935)
Herbert Ponting was renowned for his meticulous and adventurous approach to photography. His most famous work was taken during The British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913, when he became the first professional photographer to capture the Antarctic. Herbert Ponting was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 21 March 1870. He was the son of Francis W Ponting, a successful banker, a career that his father hoped his son would follow. On leaving school, he took a job at a bank in Liverpool. However, in 1892, he gave up his position and travelled to the West Coast of America.
It was here that he met his future wife, Mary Biddle Eliot, whom he married in 1895. With the help of his family’s money, Ponting bought a farm in California, which subsequently failed and they returned to England six years later.
After only a short period of time, however, Ponting chose to return to the United States, at which point he grew interested in photography and chose to make a career from it. An acquaintance commenting on one of his stereoscopic photographs suggested to Ponting that he approach publishing companies and enter his work into photographic competitions. In 1901, he travelled to the Far East to photograph the people, landscapes, and wildlife of various countries including Burma and Japan. The results were published in several magazines, including ‘Harpers Bazaar’, and ‘The Illustrated London News’. Ponting’s first book: ‘In Lotus Land, Japan’ was published in 1910, by which time he had an established reputation as a successful photographer.
In 1910, Ponting set sail with the rest of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition as the official photographer, personally chosen by Scott. His established reputation and his connection with Cecil Meares, who was in charge of the dogs for the expedition, had helped Ponting acquire the post. TheGeographical Journal wrote at the time, ‘The British Antarctic Expedition should be very well served by the camera in Mr Ponting’s hands.’ Ponting’s images from the trip are now world famous, and form one of the great bodies of Polar exploration photography. Using a plate camera and glass plate negatives, Ponting overcame almost impossible conditions to record daily life on the expedition. Happy to risk life and limb to achieve the pictures he wanted, he would then process the film in his makeshift darkroom at their camp in Cape Evans. Diaries from the expedition document that Ponting went to great lengths to take the best photograph, on one occasion narrowly missing an attack by Killer whales. Ponting was well liked by his colleagues, but he maintained a distance from them, focusing on his photographs with painstaking detail.
Herbert Ponting left the expedition in February 1912 and returned to England. Scott famously succumbed to the harsh environment soon afterwards in March 1912, on his trek back from the South Pole – deflated from having been beaten to his goal by Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen.
On his return to England in February 1912, Ponting was disappointed by the lack of response to his photographs and films. Hearing of the subsequent deaths of Scott and the four other men who reached the pole, he set out to promote the legacy of the expedition, rather than focusing on new projects. He held several lectures, and produced the film, ‘Great White Silence’, which received great acclaim.
In the last few years of his life, Ponting turned away from photography, investing in business ventures, which made him very little money. At the time of his death in London, 1935, he was almost destitute. Henry Ponting is remembered as a technically skilled photographer, and his photographs have become crucial in establishing both the legacy of Robert Scott and the enduring myth of his polar exploits.
