James Francis Hurley (15 October 1885 – 16 January 1962) was an Australian photographer, cinematographer of documentary films, and director of drama feature films. He participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica and served as an official war photographer with Australian forces during both world wars. He was the official photographer for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14) led by Douglas Mawson, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–16 led by Ernest Shackleton, and BANZARE (1929–31), again led by Mawson.
His artistic style produced many memorable images. He also used staged scenes, composites, and photographic manipulation.
Frank Hurley was born on 15 October 1885, the third of five children to parents Edward and Margaret Hurley and was raised in Glebe, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. He attended Glebe Public School. He ran away from home at 14 to work as a fitter's handyman at the Lithgow steel mill, and then served an apprenticeship in engineering until he was 18.
He bought his first camera from the foreman at the steel mill for 15 shillings, which he paid for at the rate of a shilling per week. He taught himself photography and soon bought other cameras. He began his photographic career at the age of 20, working for a postcard company in Sydney.
During his lifetime, Hurley spent more than four years in Antarctica.
At the age of 23, in 1908, Hurley learned that Australian geologist and explorer Douglas Mawson was planning an expedition to Antarctica. In 1911, fellow Sydneysider Henri Mallard recommended Hurley for the position of official photographer to Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition—ahead of himself. Hurley asserts in his biography that he then cornered Mawson as he was making his way to their interview on a train, using the advantage to talk his way into the job. Mawson was persuaded, while Mallard, who was the manager of Harringtons, a local Kodak franchise, to which Hurley was in debt, provided photographic equipment.
Although the official photographer there were some 19 other photographers who recorded the expedition which was divided across the three separate locations. Hurley was with Mawson's group at Cape Denison where the weather was so bad that Hurley claimed he had only ten absolutely calm days scattered throughout the year 1912–1913, and this was when he took many of his photos, making 82 photos on the first three days of September 1912.
The expedition departed in 1911 and Hurley returned with most of the party in early 1913. However Mawson was left behind as he was late returning from his sledging party, after the death of Xavier Mertz, and as a result Hurley made a second trip at the end of 1913 to pick up the remaining party. On this trip he took another series of photos before returning in early 1914. Some of his photos included advertising. Funds had to be raised to pay the expedition's debts after the event through film screenings, books and photographs.
Before his return in 1913, footage attributed to him was released in cinemas. Now often referred to as Home of the Blizzard, this silent film has a complicated provenance, and it is no longer known which reels were shown in the 1913 cinema showing. This version of the film was released in the UK as Life in the Antarctic.
Mawson and Hurley were horrified at the widespread killing of seals and whales by sealers and whalers, and subsequently used their influence to attempt to bring the penguin oil industry on Macquarie Island to a halt. The island was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1933, and in 1997 was listed as a World Heritage Site.
Hurley was the official photographer on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, hired on condition that he would make a film recording events on the expedition. The group set out in 1914 and was marooned until August 1916, after their ship was crushed by ice. Hurley's photographic kit for the expedition included the cinematograph machine, plate still camera, and several smaller Kodak cameras, along with various lenses, tripods, and developing equipment, most of which had to be abandoned with the loss of their ship Endurance in 1915. He kept only a hand-held Vest Pocket Kodak camera and three rolls of film and for the rest of the expedition, he shot just 38 images. He also selected and saved 120 of his glass-plate negatives, smashing about 400 remaining ones. Some of the plates from the expedition are now part of the State Library of New South Wales collection. A documentary silent film was assembled from his footage, first released as In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice in 1919. The film was restored by the British Film Institute in 1996 as South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic, with a digitally-remastered version re-released in 2022.
Hurley produced many pioneering colour images of the expedition using the then-popular Paget process of colour photography. He took photos in South Georgia in 1917. He later compiled his records into a documentary film released in 1919 as In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice. In 1996 the silent version was restored as a standalone film titled South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic. His footage was also used in the 2001 IMAX film Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure.
Hurley returned to the Antarctic in 1929 and 1931, on Mawson's British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (known as BANZARE). Footage taken by Hurley was commercially as a silent film in 1930 as Southward Ho With Mawson, which was re-released as Siege of the South in 1931, this time with a soundtrack added. Takings from Siege of the South contributed to defray the costs of the expedition, and schoolchildren's attendance contributed significantly to the takings. Union Theatres insisted on Hurley travelling with the film to promote it, and Hurley was keen to make the film a box-office success. He even added scenes with Mickey Mouse and penguins listening to a gramophone in order to appeal to children.
In 1917, Hurley joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as an honorary captain, and captured many stunning battlefield scenes during the Third Battle of Ypres. In keeping with his adventurous spirit, he took considerable risks to photograph his subjects, also producing many rare panoramic and colour photographs of the conflict. Hurley kept a diary from 1917 to 1918, chronicling his time as a war photographer. In it, he described his commitment "to illustrate to the public the things our fellows do and how war is conducted", and his short-lived resignation in October 1917 when he was ordered not to produce composite images—a practice that was especially popular among professional photographers at the time and one that he believed could portray the disgust and horror that he felt during the war in such a way that his audience would feel it too.
Some of his most well-known photographs were of the Battle of Passchendaele in the latter half of 1917. After conflict occurred between Hurley and official war historian Charles Bean about Hurley's use of composite images, Hurley was dispatched to Palestine in late 1917.
His period with the AIF ended in March 1918.
Printed reproductions of a composite image created by Hurley and two of the photographs on which it was based.
Hurley argued with superiors over the ethics of compositing photos, arguing that war was conducted on such a vast scale that it was impossible to capture the essence of it in a single negative. Some have considered the practice as an art form; others have argued that history demands the plain, simple truth. For the 1918 London exhibition, Australian War Pictures and Photographs, he employed composites for photomurals to convey drama of the war on a scale otherwise not possible using the technology available. This brought Hurley into conflict with the AIF on the grounds that montage diminished documentary value. He wrote that he would dress in civilian clothes and eavesdrop on soldiers who were visiting his exhibitions; he concluded that the composites were justified by the favourable comments they attracted.