David Wilson’s The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott opens with a jolting reminder that even on Antarctica, the past’s another country. Captain Scott’s crew on the Terra Nova expedition (1910-13) were susceptible to sailor’s hoary superstitions. They searched for the root of all bad luck on their voyage; the ‘Jonah’. The consensus settled on the camera as the evil eye.
It’s appropriate, then, that the photographs collected in this volume — carelessly filed away and recently rediscovered — are suggestive of a hard-bitten timelessness. The story of Captain Scott and his men has worn smooth by retelling. With the centenary of his and four men’s deaths approaching, it is an apt time for their memory to be revived.
David Wilson appraches their legacy from the point of view of Scott’s artistic sensitivities. It’s a welcome change from the usual accounts of blunt adventurism, dog and pony japes and a failed ‘race’.
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