The Nature of Ice by Robyn Mundy Read Free Book Online

came equipped with the necessary build and constitution.’ Indeed, Douglas would have sacrificed the photographic results rather than include a weak link in the team.
    He recalled the drive to raise fifty thousand pounds in less than a year from a British public who had already given generously to Scott’s South Pole expedition. The appeal in London’s Daily Mail to raise enough money for a ship to get started; months in their Lower Regent Street office first sending out requests to manufacturers, then letters thanking firms for tins of rabbit, plum pudding, sewing machines and tobacco, glaxo milk powder, candles—and soap, of which they’d received enough to lather the Southern Ocean. He could happily go on travelling for the rest of time, but to organise another expedition . . .
    Douglas saw Mertz reappear, a compact figure weaving down the slope on skis, seeking out undulations that sent him gliding through the air. He watched as X eased to a standstill near the dogs.
    â€˜The first Swiss to ski in Antartica,’ Hurley said. ‘He makes it look dead easy,’
    Ginger would have bowled X over had her chain been longer. She nuzzled under his arm as he untethered his skis. He scratched her back and she leaned her weight against his leg, her tongue lapping at the air.
    Then the dogs pricked their ears in unison; penguins halted in their tracks. Douglas watched X smile with the sweetness of the melody rising from the hut.
    Ginger laid her ears flat when X hoisted her up by her front legs and placed her paws on his chest. He stepped from side to side, one hand on his dance partner’s back, the other resting on her paw. Mertz and Ginger swayed to ‘The Shepherd’s Cradle Song’; the lullaby playing on the gramophone spilled across the bay. On each turn Ginger hopped and shuffled; with each step she licked her master’s chin.
    Douglas nodded. ‘The first to dance.’

Xavier Mertz at Land’s End

FIELD
TRAINING
    FREYA SAVOURS THE HOUR: too early for helicopters to begin their day. Her pack and camera case rest against her studio door, everything double-checked and ready to go. She fires off a quick email: About to leave for field training. Hoping for fine weather and photos to match . Back Sunday. Within a minute her laptop chimes with her husband’s reply: TAKE CARE OUT THERE!
    Long ago, when he was her tutor, Marcus introduced Freya to Hurley’s pictorial world, and led her to question the truth in her own photography. Mediation and manipulation have been part of photography from its early days . He had held up a Hurley image before the class. Take the process of composing, positioning the subject, cropping objects the photographer considers extraneous or an interruption. In this sense, doesn’t every photo lie?
    She studies Hurley’s photo now. Xavier Mertz at Land’s End . Carefully posed near the ice cliff, the figure of Mertz offers more than scale to the icescape. An enduring Hurley theme was human fragility pitted against the might of nature. Hurley captures Mertz’s awe as he gazes out across the sea ice, the low-angle light dragging his shadow back across the snow. Did Xavier Mertz have any premonition of what lay ahead?
    When your own shutter blinks —Marcus’s eyes had swept the tutorial room— think about the story you’re showing. Then look at what you’re masking.
    A.memory from earlier in the week dances before Freya’s eyes. Not a smart idea , the man driving the bulldozer had said, unable to hide his disdain at finding her out on the ice alone. Neither smart, nor her proudest moment. Marcus, if she told him, would struggle to imagine his wife defying the rules.
    In a small, primitive darkroom at Commonwealth Bay, Frank Hurley brought this image of Mertz into being, meticulously retouching the negative, using camelhair brushes and developer to tease out highlights and shadows. Hurley worked like an