Frank Hurley - The Man Who Made History

One of the last of the great imperial adventurers, Frank Hurley captured some of the earliest images of the world’s most inhospitable and uncharted territories.

Best known as the cinematographer on Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition to the Antarctic, Hurley was also an early pioneer of colour photography, helped invent the documentary film and risked his life to bring back images from some of the great events of the 20th century.

His images of Antarctic heroes, World Wars, phenomenal landscapes and mysterious natives in faraway jungles seized the imagination of all who saw them. But just how real were they? Was he a giant of photography or just a conjurer with a camera?

This stunning documentary retraces Hurley’s footsteps, from the Antarctic, Belgium, Papua New Guinea and Israel to Australia, revealing a grand illusionist with an instinctive appreciation for the power of the photograph, and the man who created some of the most enduring images of the first century of the photographic age.