Historic polar images 1845-1982
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This project developed a repository of freely available visual and textual resources to support learning, teaching and research into topics relating to the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration and science. It provides access to hidden collections for use at all educational levels.
Executive Summary
See the Freeze Frame collection
The Freeze Frame project set out to conserve many of the historical photographic negative collections held in the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), University of Cambridge. We were concerned to this material readily available to researchers and others without the need to travel to Cambridge in person.
Due to the fragile nature of much of the SPRI photographic collections, access was severely limited. The Institute’s oldest photographs are daguerreotypes, a significant number are on glass plates, while other more modern negatives are, by their very nature, difficult to view. Research access to these collections has hitherto been negligible due to their format.
Through the Freeze Frame project we were able to address the issues of conservation, preservation and access. Conservation has been achieved through digitisation, providing high-resolution copies from the negatives, which can now be made freely available to user communities (UK Further and Higher Education in particular) through a dedicated website
The digitisation process has ensured that each image is preserved in its present condition for future generations to view. High resolution tiff files are stored as digital preservation copies while smaller jpegs may be provided for research access.
Through the dedicated website, related resource packages have been created to help users understand the polar world and to navigate their way through the photograph collections.
20,000 images from expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic were chosen for the project. These include some of the earliest poplar photography in the daguerreotypes taken of Sir John Franklin and his men prior to their voyage to the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage in 1845. These are the last images ever captured of the men who all perished during the expedition. Famous images by professional photographer Herbert Ponting of Captain Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition of 1910-12 form the most famous images to be included in the project, while the deposit of Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Transglobe expedition archive in the summer of 2007 - a late addition to the list of collections to be digitised - meant that the period covered could be extended to 1982. Sir Ranulph’s collection also forms the link between the two Polar Regions as Transglobe, alone of all the collections, covers both the north and south poles.
A dedicated team was recruited to carry out the digitisation, metadata creation and to produce the educational resources to stand alongside the images. While the Franklin, Fiennes and Ponting images may be some of the most evocative, particular highlights have been the expeditions of the 1930s which mapped both the Arctic and Antarctic and whose photographs document both life in the polar regions and the development of science and technology in these hostile environments.
In July 2008 the Institute hosted an exhibition entitled Face to Face: historic polar portraits. This showcased 50 polar portraits, half from the modern photographic output of professional photographer Martin Hartley and half gleaned from the Scott Polar Research Institute’s historical collections. Many of the historical images appear in the Freeze Frame collections and the remainder were discovered during the research for the project. This exhibition then went on tour to venues including Athy in Ireland and the Explorers Club in New York. It is presently on display at Discovery Point in Dundee, home of Captain Scott’s first expedition ship.
A book to accompany the Face to Face exhibition was published by the Institute in 2008. This brings together over one hundred images from the collections. Alongside these stunning images are accounts of modern and historic polar photography and conversations with polar photographers. The book has been well received and featured in a number of national newspapers.
Face to Face provided a high profile accompaniment to the general outreach work carried out by the Freeze Frame team throughout the project. Education Resources Officer, Mel Rouse, carried out several engagements with students of all age groups, where she brought the Freeze Frame project and the JISC digitisation programme as a whole to the attention of our core audiences.