Black and White

The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, until April 15

fasedinburgh.com

HERBERT Ponting’s photographs and film footage for Captain Scott’s British Antarctic expedition 1910 -1913 are his most famous surviving works. Iconic, immeasurably evocative (not least given the eventual outcome of the Terra Nova expedition) and superbly shot, his meticulous attention to detail and eye for the natural world stand out, the images taken and printed with equipment which was incredibly cumbersome even by the standards of the period, not least when matched to the challenging Antarctic environment.

Shown here as part of a wider exhibition of prints and artworks brought together by virtue of their monochrome nature, these four original prints, dating from 1911-1914, some signed and one stamped with the Fine Art Society stamp from the official post-expedition 1913 exhibition, include The Terra Nova in McMurdo Sound (dated 7 Jan 1911) and the lovely blue-toned silver bromide The Terra Nova at the Ice Foot (dated 16 Jan 1911). Ponting was an inveterate experimentalist, both with process and staging – the expedition crew came to call posing for photographs “ponting” – and his work inspired Frank Hurley, who photographed Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition in 1914. On discovering the outcome of Scott’s mission in 1913, himself long-returned, he dedicated his life to promoting the mission and courage of those on the Terra Nova and his sense of the majesty of the Antarctic.

On the walls around, 200-odd years of monochrome prints, charcoals and paintings from the Fine Art Society holdings, with artists from John Byrne to Alexander Runciman, Peter Doig to Oscar Marzaroli.