RGS exhibition: “With Scott to the Pole”
July 22nd, 2005Today I biked up to Kensington to the Royal Geographical Society’s shiny new building – it’s in Exhibition Road, next to Imperial College and the Albert Hall. They’ve got an exhibition on at the moment called “With Scott to the Pole” – it’s a small selection of the photographs taken whilst on Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole from 1910 to 1913. Most of the pictures were taken by Herbert Ponting, who was the official photographer. It’s a really excellent selection – you see the domesticity and the heroism of the explorers side by side. The pictures are accompanied by notes, usually including quotes from present-day explorers (Ranulph Fiennes, Mike Stroud, Pen Hadow, etc) and scientists talking about how Scott’s expedition pioneered a lot of the techniques still used in the Antarctic today, and how the scientific data they so painstakingly collected is of great value today in assessing climate change.
If you’ve got time, go and see it. It’s on until the 31st July. If you haven’t got time, the RGS’s archive of Antarctic pics is now online, including all the pictures from the Scott expedition.