Exhibition
Everest 1921 - A Reconnaissance
Pioneering works in the history of photography!
Exhibition of prints from the newly digitised negatives of the 1921 British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition.
With the kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), this exhibition showcases a selection of platinum prints of the approaches to Mount Everest, and the mountain itself, taken in 1921 and reconstructed from newly digitised fragile silver nitrate negatives, preserved for the Society by the British Film Institute, and celluloid and glass plate negatives held at the Society.
The photographs were originally intended to complement the purpose of the Expedition – to carry out new and more detailed survey work in the region. The Expedition was the first to set foot on the mountain, climbing to over 23,000 feet and laying plans for the subsequent attempts on the summit in 1922 and 1924. However, notwithstanding these imperatives, the aesthetic quality of these images – among the first to document Everest – is remarkable.
The selection on display includes some of the finest panoramic photographs of any high mountain region ever taken. And as well as capturing the sublime beauty of the high Himalayas, the images are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 Expedition supplied the very first recorded images of the Tibetan people.
Many of the images in this exhibition were taken by one of the most famous alumni of Magdalene College, George Leigh Mallory (1905-1909). Mallory was a member of the 1921, 1922 and 1924 Expeditions to Everest, falling to his death while descending the mountain in June 1924; whether or not he and his climbing partner, Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine, reached the summit remains a matter of speculation to this day. We include display materials from the College archives on his time as a student at Magdalene, letters home from Tibet in 1921 and a collection of climbing equipment typical of that used in the 1920s.