In 1913, British Army Major John Noel reached within 40 miles of his goal – to reach Everest and establish a potential route to climb the mountain.
Noel’s ambition was shared, most notably by Mr. Douglas Freshfield and Dr. Alexander Kellas, who had earlier explored potential routes and provided important documentary and photographic evidence to show how climbers might reach and ultimately ascend Everest. Noel’s official report of his attempt was postponed by the outbreak of World War I and was not delivered to the Royal Geographical Society until 10 March 1919.
Noel spoke to gathered members of the Society and the Alpine Club at the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place. His lecture, A Journey to Tashirak in Southern Tibet, and the Eastern Approaches to Mount Everest, was further enhanced by expert contributions from Freshfield and Kellas, supporting the proposal that a reconnaissance expedition be undertaken. At the meeting, Captain J. P. Farrar, President of the Alpine Club and the newly appointed President of the Society, Sir Francis Younghusband pledged mutual support for ‘an attempt to ascend Everest’. That night, the idea of a ‘Mount Everest Committee’, formally founded in 1921, came into fruition.
The resulting 1921 British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition mapped approach routes to the mountain and climbed to 23,000 feet, laying plans for future attempts and providing some of the first – and finest – close-range images of Everest.
Photography was at the heart of this first reconnaissance expedition to Everest.
The expedition team (supported by porters) included: Guy Henry Bullock, climber, who reached the North Col at 23,000 feet; Alexander Heron, geologist; Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard Bury, leader of the expedition, who reached 22,000 feet; Gyalzen Kazi, from Gangtok in Sikkim, who acted as interpreter; Abdul Jalil Khan, Photographer, Survey of India; George Herbert Leigh Mallory, climber, who reached 23,000 feet with Bullock. Mallory was the only expedition member to participate in all three of the 1920’s expeditions; Dr. Alexander Mitchell Kellas, explorer, photographer and veteran Himalayan mountaineer. Kellas died on the approach to Kampa Dzong, where he was buried within sight of Everest; Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Treise Morshead, Chief Surveyor to the expedition, on secondment from the Survey of India; Harold Raeburn, initially, climbing leader; Gujjar Singh, Survey of India; Lalbir Singh Thapa, Survey of India; Turubaj Singh, Survey of India; Cheheten Wangdi, interpreter and general agent for the expedition; Brigadier Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler, Canadian mountaineer and surveyor specialising in photo-survey techniques; Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston, medical doctor, ornithologist and botanist.
“[The Expedition was] … admirably equipped for the acquirement of knowledge. But acquirement of knowledge was not the only object which the Expedition had in view. It could not be doubted that the region would possess beauty of exceptional grandeur.
So it was hoped that the Expedition would discover, describe and reveal to us, by camera and pen, beauty no less valuable than knowledge.”
Sir Francis Younghusband President of the Royal Geographical Society, 1919-1922.
“We camped on a level terrace beside the famous Lapche temple. It is a square plain building with a Chinese-like roof surmounted by a bright copper ornament. An old Llama and an old woman act as caretakers, and nobody would guess this was one of the most famous places in Tibet. Buddhists from everywhere make pilgrimages here.”
A.F. Wollaston from his account in the official publication of the expedition: Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance, 1921, Edward Arnold & Co Ltd.
“…I photographed a group of several monks. They had never seen a camera or photographs before… before leaving we went in to see the Head Llama who has lived for over sixty-six years in this monastery. After much persuasion, the other monks induced him to come outside and have his photograph taken, telling him he was an old man, and that his time on earth was short, and they would like to have a picture to remember him by… The fame of this photograph spread throughout the country and in places hundreds of miles away I was asked for photographs of the Old Abbot.” C.K. Howard Bury
Copies of the photograph of the Abbot of Shekar-Chöte by Howard Bury were often given as a gift by later expedition members to Tibetans, who placed the image in shrines to worship.
The Abbot of Shekar Chote. Photographer: Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury (1881-1963), Celluloid Negative, MEE21/0327
Photography has always been an important component of Mount Everest expeditions. From the first expedition onward, cameras and the paraphernalia required were part of the equipment factored into the logistics of climbing the mountain. For the porters it was certainly a heavy load, from cameras and lenses to glass plate negatives, tripods and chemicals. The early expeditions took all that was needed both to expose and to develop pictures on the mountain.
The 1921 photographs were taken by a disparate group of men, from scientists to climbers, doctors of medicine to surveyors and there are fascinating differences in how each saw and recorded their time on the mountain.
These early photographs are part of the Society’s wider collection of over 20,000 Everest images, documenting the expeditions carried out under the auspices of the Mount Everest Committee.
They are also a critically important source of historical documentation for the Tibetan and Nepali peoples – the Everest archive at the Society holds some of the first photographs of people in the region – as well as being a valuable tool for wider research.
Photographs taken in 1921 by Mallory, Bullock, Howard-Bury, Wollaston and Wheeler (with Abdul Jalil Khan as a contributor for the India Survey), were originally intended to complement the purpose of the expedition – to carry out new and more detailed survey work in the region, in preparation for future attempts to summit Everest.
However, the aesthetic quality of these images – among the first to document Everest at close range – is remarkable, including some of the finest panoramic photographs of any high mountain region ever taken. They remain astonishing in their ability to transport the viewer to another time and place.
“Mountain shapes are often fantastic seen through a mist: these were like the wildest creation of a dream…Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and arêtes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.”
George Mallory, from his account in the official publication of the expedition: Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance, 1921, Edward Arnold & Co Ltd.
This exhibition showcases a selection of platinum prints, available to purchase, made from the newly digitised glass and celluloid negatives of the 1921 Everest expedition.
These stunning prints are the first in this format to be created from negatives in the Society’s Collections and include newly digitised fragile silver nitrate negatives, housed in specially controlled conditions for the Society by the British Film Institute.
We now have a legacy of some 20,000 images within the Collections of the Society, created as a result of the combined work of the eight expeditions that were jointly managed by the Royal Geographical Society with the Alpine Club, through the Mount Everest Committee.
“This area seemed suitable for the experiment. It contained some 1,200 square miles of country – about a season’s work – and gave opportunities for photographing all types of country from rolling hills with glaciers and cultivation, through steep gorges, to glaciers and tremendous snow and ice-clad mountains.
On June 26th I established my base camp one mile below the snout of the Kyetrak Glacier. I slept 41 nights on moraines and glaciers at altitudes between 18,000 and 22,200 feet.”
E.O. Wheeler describes his camp and preparation for photo-survey work in June 1921.
Camp at 20,000 feet, in cloudy weather after snowfall. Photographer: George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), Glass Plate Negative, MEE21/0709
Camp at 20,000 feet – The last day. Photographer: George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), Glass Plate Negative, MEE21/0715
Pumori from Second Advanced Camp, West Rongbuk Glacier. Photographer: George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), Celluloid Negative, MEE21/0638
Platinum Prints
The Society has worked with the Salto Ulbeek Studio in Belgium, the team responsible for the Society’s recent Frank Hurley ‘Endurance’ platinum prints, to carry out painstaking digitisation work and to then create these exceptional new prints in one of the oldest, rarest and most stable of all black and white photographic printing processes.
This project is the fruit of an on-going partnership between the Royal Geographical Society and Salto Ulbeek Publishers. It began with a detailed historical overview of the many thousands of negatives brought back from the 1921, 1922, 1924, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938 and 1953 Mount Everest expeditions, housed in the archives of the Society.
A selection of the most historically and aesthetically significant negatives were then scanned at an extremely high resolution, allowing for a better analysis of their material quality and state of preservation. The high resolution scans were then digitally cleaned and restored. This is a painstaking process that requires up to one day of work per photograph and which has thus far only been carried out on the negatives brought back from the initial 1921 expedition.
Once restored to the original condition, some of the negatives were combined into panoramas as originally intended, and all of the photographs were printed through the platinum-palladium printing process, using special techniques developed by Salto Ulbeek.
Mount Everest, showing South Peak, North Peak and Col, from peak (20,500 ft.) above Advanced Camp. Photographer: George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), Glass Plate Negatives, MEE21/0669-0671
Chomolönzo and Makalu from summit 21,200 ft. south-west of Advanced Base. Photographer: George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), Glass Plate Negatives, MEE21/0705-0706
“It was a depressing evening. I thought of the many wonderful occasions when I had caught the mountain as I thought just at the right moment, its moments of most lovely splendour – of all those moments that would never return and of the record of all we had seen which neither ourselves nor perhaps anyone else would ever see again.”
George Mallory writes about his frustration on discovering his mistake in putting the negative plates back to front in the camera he was operating.
“The heavier photographic equipment included an old and well-seasoned 7.5 x 5 Hare Camera, lent to the Expedition, but newly fitted by Messrs. Dallmeyer with a Stigmatic lens of 9 inches focal length, a negative telephoto lens of 4 inches focal length giving enlargement up to 6 times, and a set of Wratten filters. With this camera Mr. Wollaston secured some of the finest pictures taken on the expedition.
There were also two quarter-plate cameras for glass plates: a Sinclair Una camera fitted by Messrs. Dallmeyer with a Stigmatic lens of 5.3 inches focal length, and Adon telephoto lens; and a second Sinclair camera lent by Captain Noel.
One or other of these two was used by Mr. Mallory at many of the high camps, and both the Hare 7.5 x 5 and the Sinclair quarter-plate went to the 22,500-foot camp at the Lhakpa La: doubtless the greatest height yet attained by so large a camera as the former. The principal difficulty with these cameras was unsteadiness in a heavy wind when the telephoto lens was in use; and the tripods have been strengthened and the lens supports stiffened before they go out again.
The cameras which used films were a Panoram Kodak of 5 inches focal length, with films 12 x 4 inches; a No.1 Autograph Kodak, and two Vest Pocket Kodaks. Howard-Bury also used his own 7x5 Kodak.”
From the Appendix to: Mount Everest: the Reconnaissance, 1921, Edward Arnold & Co Ltd.