'He ... is an absolute artist in the way he selects his subjects.
He is a warrior with his camera and would go anywhere or do anything to get a picture.'
Lionel Greenstreet, First Officer
Shackleton's Endurance Expedition

Frank Hurley was once a household name in Australia. Now most famous for his photographs of the Mawson and Shackleton (Endurance) Antarctic expeditions, he was also a visual chronicler of many of the major events of the twentieth century and of a rapidly disappearing non-Western world. He was an official photographer in two world wars, a pioneering documentary-maker, participant in early feats of aviation, and cinematographer on major Australian feature films of the 1930s, including The Squatter's Daughter and The Silence of Dean Maitland. At the height of his fame he even knocked on Hollywood's doors. In his later years, he travelled the length and breadth of his country to produce illustrated books that eulogised Australia and its people.
Hurley was a man of ceaseless energy and unbounded enthusiasm for his craft, an enigmatic and sometimes contradictory character — a loner who courted publicity, a curmudgeonly perfectionist, a pragmatic sentimentalist. He craved adventure, excitement and accolades, often forsaking his family and business commitments to travel and work all over the globe.
In this comprehensive new biography, with over 100 photographs including never-before-published Hurley images and other rarely seen material from the family archive and Hurley's lesser-known adventures, Alasdair McGregor vividly describes the character, achievements and disappointments of a driven and remarkable Australian.

Painter, photographer and one-time architect, Alasdair McGregor is the author of The Kimberley: Horizons of Stone, Australia's Wild Islands (both with Quentin Chester) and Mawson's Huts: An Antarctic Expedition Journal. He was artist and photographer for three AAP Mawson's Huts Foundation expeditions to Antarctica, and in 2000 was curator (for the Australian High Commission to Canada) of '... that sweep of splendour': A Century of Australians in Antarctica, a travelling exhibition featuring the photography of Frank Hurley.

Fairchild Beach, Heard Island is situated 4,000km south-west of Perth in the Southern Ocean and the island is one of Australia's most isolated and beautiful territories. Dominated by a 2,745m active volcano known as Big Ben, Heard Island is home to vast populations of antarctic wildlife. The penquins depicted here are Gentoo Penguins, Pygoscelis papua.