Did you know that potato-starch grain played a key role in bringing colour to Antarctica?

Find out how in this blog post, as Jan Chojecki brings the famous autochrome photographs taken at Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Hope Cross back in 1922 to light.

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For generations, Antarctic exploration has been rendered in black and white. Striking monochrome scenes captured by early Antarctic explorers and photographers using large, heavy cameras have been used to illustrate stories of adventure in the unknown continent for decades.

In 1903, a new colour technology named autochrome was developed by French inventors Lumière and became commercially available in 1907. Fast forward to 1921, and the wide adoption of this advanced technology resulted in over one-thousand colour plates being brought on what would become Shackleton’s final voyage, aboard the Quest. The moments documented on these colour plates would go on to be recognised as some of the most poignant in the enduring story of Ireland’s famous intrepid explorer.

Jan Chojecki is the grandson of John Quiller Rowett, who funded Shackleton’s Quest expedition of 1921-22. Chojecki’s latest venture in the publishing of Quest stories is that of digitising and printing a special collection of the 30 autochrome images made on the expedition by George Hubert Wilkins. Enlarged copies of three of these photographs now accompany the Hope Cross at Discovery Point, overlooking the RRS Discovery; the ship that first took Shackleton to the Antarctic 21 years before his passing.

We asked Jan to share the story of these mesmerising photographs and the plans for their future; bringing colour to the monochrome history of Antarctic exploration.

“We all think of Heroic Age polar photography as black and white, with iconic pictures by photographers such as Hurley and Ponting. In terms of colour though, there were things such as hand tinting going on, and there were various pigments that you used in processing to give shades and colours, to create a mood.

“There was also something called tricolour, which was really one of the first attempts. You’d take three pictures, in blue, green and red, and super-impose them together. It was obviously impractical for moving subjects, but photographers did make use of that technology at the time – particularly on Discovery.”

Aboard Discovery in 1902-1904, Dr. Reginald Koettlitz made use of tri-colour technology to take the very first colour photographs of life in Antarctica – including self-portraits on the ship! However, the collection of photographs was not included in the final Discovery expedition reports and have become seemingly lost to history.

“Autochromes came along at the beginning of the century; 1907 brought the first commercially available autochromes, created by the French inventors Lumière. They were actually invented in 1903 but still were too late for Discovery’s first expedition.

“These new autochrome plates fitted into most cameras of the time. The system was actually very similar to colour film today, using light-sensitive pigment. It consisted of potato-starch grains in three different colours, which acted as a kind of light filter. Light came through the starch grains and exposed a photo-sensitive emulsion (in the same way as black and white would) which was then reverse processed; what was light became dark and what was dark became light.

“Projecting through the reverse processed positive colour images, the viewer sees light going through a blue grain or red grain but, from a distance, the exposed colours merge to form a colour palette which is actually quite broad.

“The technical bit of it is all quite clever, using the potato-starch.

“The impracticalities of autochrome technology were that exposure times had to be very long; for example, you would be looking at a 1-second exposure in bright sunlight in the middle of the day and around 10-seconds for cloudy conditions.

“Colour photography was particularly valuable for the natural history side of things. It was really important to make proper coloured records of species found in exploration.

“Things tend to turn white in pickle, so the samples that were brought back from expeditions in jars had often lost their colour by the time they got back. Colour photographs could act as a way of documenting the real colours of wildlife.

“You have to use a yellow filter, as autochromes are very blue-balanced. There’s a real art to rendering the colour properly, due to the kind of blue cast that comes along with it.

“So, for scientific as much as aesthetic reasons, autochrome photographs were a breakthrough.”

In 1911, the wonderous new technology of autochrome photography plates were taken aboard the Terra Nova, to record Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition. They were used – admittedly unsuccessfully – by Herbert Ponting.

When it came to producing stocks for the Shackleton-Rowett Quest expedition, it was requested that around one thousand autochrome photographic plates were accounted for, along with black and white and cinefilm. Of the one thousand autochrome plates, only thirty were exposed by expedition naturalist-turned-photographer, George Hubert Wilkins.

“Although an engineer by training, Wilkins was a competent natural historian, with a particular interest in ornithology. And he’d been a war photographer during WW1.

“Realising that making films was incredibly important for publicity as well education and public learning, John Charles Bee Mason was brought on the expedition as film maker. He got sent back home fairly early with seasickness, and Shackleton turned to Wilkins and said, ‘You’ll be the photographer as well now’, which meant that he was taking all of the photographs, dealing with cinefilm, and being the naturalist.

“Wilkins ultimately only takes a few autochromes because the technology is still experimental; with black and white, photographers of the day knew better what to expect and what results they were going to get.”

“The thirty photographs cover limited glimpses of the expedition, mostly of South Georgia and Wilkins Nature interests – the birdlife, the views, the mountains in both snowy and non-snowy conditions. There aren’t the crew portraits that Ponting and Hurley would have taken – it seems Wilkins preferred to be taking pictures of creatures like albatross than his peers!

“All of this gear weighed a tonne, not like the pocket cameras as we know today. Wilkins would spend a lot of time carting all of this stuff around, as his diaries mention; ‘Walked about a mile out and then had to go back and get more gear’.”

As well as providing insights into life in South Georgia, Wilkins’ diary entries provided Jan with information on the location of photographs and shed light on the actions of the Quest crew before and after the devastating passing of their expedition leader on 5th January 1922.

“There are scenes for example, where Wilkins writes having seen a waterfall that he thought would make a lovely picture. A few days later, he went back to take the picture. We now know the story of that, and almost exactly where it is.

“Every picture was taken for a reason. And now we know the story of each of these wonderful pictures.”

“The Quest autochrome set ends with the building of the Shackleton memorial cairn – with the Hope Cross – at the entrance to Grytviken harbour. Wilkins doesn’t take any more colour photographs after that.

“After Shackleton’s death, it could be that experimenting with colour didn’t seem as important anymore. Things wound down. The expedition was originally going to last two-and-a-half years, circumnavigating the Antarctic, but with Shackleton gone, as we know, that it didn’t happen.”

The process of restoring these treasured images and of reproducing them has been one of great care and respect, calling on the expertise of a Belgian firm with great history in the field. 

“I’ve had these photographs in the family, and always known that they were there but never really thought too hard about it. When all of the interest in exploration blew up, I started properly curating them and got them sealed off with a glass stand that protects the emulsion and stabilises it.  

“The second thing was to digitally curate them. We got them scanned by Salto-Ulbeek and worked with Georges Charlier there to produce files of about 1GB per photograph. You can see the individual potato-starch grains, the quality is so strong.  

 “Salto-Ulbeek work with archives such as the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute to produce long-lasting platinum palladium prints – they know what they’re doing when it comes to printing! 

“We’ve produced a 48-page booklet containing all 30 of the Quest autochrome images. Each picture is explained as part of the story along with diary entries from Wilkins. Individual prints are available in a medium and a large size, each printed on cotton paper by Georges himself.” 

“What I find is really interesting is that people try to re-create the autochrome aesthetic now! 

“I would have liked to have tried autochrome photography; they really are so beautiful.” 

It is a privilege to share these early experimentations in colour photography as the backdrop to the Hope Cross at Discovery Point, and to have heard the fascinating history accompanying them from Jan Chojecki. Thank you to Jan for taking the time to share his expertise and for his continued support. 

You can see the photographs of the Hope Cross at Discovery Point.  

If the story of Dr. Koettlitz’s lost colour photographs has piqued your interest, find out more at our YouTube channel!