Frank Hurley OBE

  • Updated
    03/08/26
  • Read time
    2 minutes
Frank Hurley Click to enlarge image
Frank Hurley self-portrait, on board the Discovery, about 1929. Image from the collections of the State Library of New South Wales. Image: Photolab Imaging Services
© State Library of New South Wales

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

1885 - 1962

One of Australia’s most remarkable photographers, James Francis ‘Frank’ Hurley made some of the first images and films of Antarctica, the jungles of New Guinea and European battlefields. His images are imbued with his daring spirit and love of adventure.

At age 13, Hurley ran away from his home in Glebe, Sydney, and worked in a steel mill in Lithgow, returning two years later to resume his education. At age 17, he bought a Kodak box camera and taught himself photography. He joined a postcard business in Sydney where he earned a reputation both for the quality of his work and the risks he took to secure his images, such as facing monstrous waves breaking on rocks, or an oncoming train.

Scene near Boianai village, Goodenough Bay
Scene near Boianai village, Goodenough Bay, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, May 1921. AMS320 V4534 Image: Frank Hurley
© Courtesy of Australian Museum V4534

In 1911, Hurley became official photographer to Douglas Mawson’s first Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He then filmed an expedition through northern Australia before joining Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914–17. Hurley continued documenting the struggle for survival when the ship, Endurance, was crushed by pack-ice. As it was about to sink, he dived into the freezing water to retrieve film and photographic plates that preserved 120 precious images of the frozen continent.

Frank-Hurley-Antarctica-2
Glimpse of the Endurance trapped in ice, December 1914, during Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic expedition, 1914–17. Image: Frank Hurley
© Courtesy of Australian Museum
Westpac Long Gallery
200 Treasures

Hurley was appointed official photographer for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) from 1917–18, recording the war’s devastation and carnage. During the 1920s, he filmed and photographed the first images, including aerial views, of remote parts of New Guinea, in particular its people, and undertook expeditions through Torres Strait. He returned to Antarctica with Mawson for the 1929–31 British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition. Hurley served as a photographer and director of films for the AIF in World War II in the Middle East. He lectured and wrote numerous books and articles. He died in Sydney in 1962.