The Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition is often described as one of the greatest survival stories of all time. What is more seldom remembered is that survival applied not only to Shackleton and his men, but also to the objects they carried. Most notably, the glass-plate and celluloid negatives that the Australian photographer Frank Hurley exposed was allowed to salvage by Shackleton, and which now constitute the enduring visual record of the expedition.

As fragile as they were precious, Hurley’s negatives faced the same relentless dangers as the men themselves, whether aboard the ship, camping on the sea ice, or sailing in three tiny lifeboats toward Elephant Island. As Hurley later recalled: “I had to preserve them almost with my life; for a time came when we had to choose between heaving them overboard or throwing away our surplus food - and the food went over!”

Thanks to its exclusive collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Salto Ulbeek has been able to return to Hurley’s original negatives and to print them, for the first time, using the platinum-palladium process. The result is a series of prints that not only take the viewer to heart of the Endurance story, but that also attain a depth, tonal subtlety, and permanence that Hurley himself could only have dreamed of.

In collaboration with RGS we are offering a limited edition of platinum palladium prints. These are prints are produced from scans of the original Hurley glass plate negates, printed by hand in our darkroom in Ulbeek, Belgium.

For full details on the availability of edition numbers and sizes, please select the Enquire button and share the title of the print or prints that have you are interested in.