This is a story photography nuts like myself dream about. A story that brushes aside the fripperies on modern photography and strips the art form back to its bare bones. Time acts like a flock of vultures and shows us just how powerful still photography remains, if used correctly. Photography is a time machine and a recent discovery in Antarctica demonstrates that perfectly.

A set of previously unseen cellulose Nitrate negatives was discovered in Captain Scott’s Cape Evans Hut, which is being restored by the Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project run by New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust. The damaged negatives have been painstakingly restored and reveal Antarctic images that have never been seen before.

 The photographs are from Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-1917 Ross Sea Party, which spent time living in Scott’s hut after being stranded on Ross Island when their ship blew out to sea.

I use a camera from that era and can testify how tricky it is to get a picture at all compared to digital cameras, so I can only imagine the difficulties the photographer had to overcome to produce images in the cold and snow of the Antarctic.

You can see the pictures at http://www.nzaht.org/AHT/antarctic-photos/