Antarctic Odyssey, Through the Eyes of a Polar Pioneer

[n2doc]

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: October 17, 2011


David M. Wilson, a polar historian, was having drinks in a London art salesroom several years ago when an unknown collector approached him. “He said, ‘You’ll never guess what I have in my collection,’ ” Mr. Wilson recalled.

The collector, Richard Kossow, told him that in 2001 he had purchased a portfolio of Antarctic photographs from the early 20th century. But these weren’t just any Antarctic photographs: They were from Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition of 1910-13, in which Scott and several other men, including Mr. Wilson’s great-uncle, Edward Wilson, died while returning from the pole.

And these weren’t just any photographs from that expedition, Mr. Kossow told him: They were taken by Scott himself. “I just about choked on my gin and tonic,” Mr. Wilson said.

The whereabouts of most of the Scott photographs, taken around the expedition’s winter quarters on Ross Island and while on the journey toward the pole, had long been a mystery. Only a dozen or two had ever been published, and many of those had been incorrectly attributed to others. The unpublished photos had apparently languished in a commercial archive for decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/science/18pole.html?src=me&ref=science