Frank Hurley

Hurley also used a film camera to record a range of experiences including the Antarctic expeditions (see above); the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; and war in the Middle East during World War II. The camera was a Debrie Parvo L 35 mm hand-crank camera made in France. This camera is now in the collection of the National Museum of Australia. Hurley made several documentaries throughout his career, most notably Pearls and Savages (1921), which he directed and produced. This film was the result of extensive surveying, photographic, and scientific work carried out by Hurley on an expedition to New Guinea, using two seaplanes provided by Lebbeus Hordern. After claiming to have discovered one of the Lost Tribes of Israel in New Guinea, the film garnered much publicity in New York City, and Putnam's asked him to write a book. Hurley wrote a book of the same name in ten days, which was published and distributed within three weeks. The film was very successful in London, leading to entrepreneur Sir Oswald Stoll contracting Hurley to produce two dramatic films in New Guinea. Hurley assembled a cast and took them from London to New Guinea in 1925. Hurley was refused entrance to Papua, partly due to his sensationalistic stories of head-hunters, but also due to his allegedly improper methods used to gather many artefacts for the Australian Museum in Sydney. The crew relocated to Dutch New Guinea to make the dramatic feature film Jungle Woman (released May 1926). Hurley then made The Hound of the Deep, which was made for Stoll on Thursday Island and released in 1926. He worked as cinematographer for Cinesound Productions in Sydney for most of the 1930s, where his best known film credits include The Squatter's Daughter (1933), The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) and Grandad Rudd (1935). Hurley wrote the original story and script for the film Tall Timber (1937), but it was greatly rewritten.

During his lifetime, Hurley spent more than four years in Antarctica. At the age of 23, in 1908, Hurley learned that Australian geologist and explorer Douglas Mawson was planning an expedition to Antarctica. In 1911, fellow Sydneysider Henri Mallard recommended Hurley for the position of official photographer to Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition—ahead of himself. Hurley asserts in his biography that he then cornered Mawson as he was making his way to their interview on a train, using the advantage to talk his way into the job. Mawson was persuaded, while Mallard, who was the manager of Harringtons, a local Kodak franchise, to which Hurley was in debt, provided photographic equipment. Although the official photographer there were some 19 other photographers who recorded the expedition which was divided across the three separate locations. Hurley was with Mawson's group at Cape Denison where the weather was so bad that Hurley claimed he had only ten absolutely calm days scattered throughout the year 1912–1913, and this was when he took many of his photos, making 82 photos on the first three days of September 1912. The expedition departed in 1911 and Hurley returned with most of the party in early 1913. However Mawson was left behind as he was late returning from his sledging party, after the death of Xavier Mertz, and as a result Hurley made a second trip at the end of 1913 to pick up the remaining party. On this trip he took another series of photos before returning in early 1914. Some of his photos included advertising. Funds had to be raised to pay the expedition's debts after the event through film screenings, books and photographs. Before his return in 1913, footage attributed to him was released in cinemas. Now often referred to as Home of the Blizzard, this silent film has a complicated provenance, and it is no longer known which reels were shown in the 1913 cinema showing. This version of the film was released in the UK as Life in the Antarctic. Mawson and Hurley were horrified at the widespread killing of seals and whales by sealers and whalers, and subsequently used their influence to attempt to bring the penguin oil industry on Macquarie Island to a halt. The island was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1933, and in 1997 was listed as a World Heritage Site. Hurley was the official photographer on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, hired on condition that he would make a film recording events on the expedition. The group set out in 1914 and was marooned until August 1916, after their ship was crushed by ice. Hurley's photographic kit for the expedition included the cinematograph machine, plate still camera, and several smaller Kodak cameras, along with various lenses, tripods, and developing equipment, most of which had to be abandoned with the loss of their ship Endurance in 1915. He kept only a hand-held Vest Pocket Kodak camera and three rolls of film and for the rest of the expedition, he shot just 38 images. He also selected and saved 120 of his glass-plate negatives, smashing about 400 remaining ones. Some of the plates from the expedition are now part of the State Library of New South Wales collection. A documentary silent film was assembled from his footage, first released as In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice in 1919. The film was restored by the British Film Institute in 1996 as South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic, with a digitally-remastered version re-released in 2022. Hurley produced many pioneering colour images of the expedition using the then-popular Paget process of colour photography. He took photos in South Georgia in 1917. He later compiled his records into a documentary film released in 1919 as In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice. In 1996 the silent version was restored as a standalone film titled South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic. His footage was also used in the 2001 IMAX film Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. Hurley returned to the Antarctic in 1929 and 1931, on Mawson's British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (known as BANZARE). Footage taken by Hurley was commercially as a silent film in 1930 as Southward Ho With Mawson, which was re-released as Siege of the South in 1931, this time with a soundtrack added. Takings from Siege of the South contributed to defray the costs of the expedition, and schoolchildren's attendance contributed significantly to the takings. Union Theatres insisted on Hurley travelling with the film to promote it, and Hurley was keen to make the film a box-office success. He even added scenes with Mickey Mouse and penguins listening to a gramophone in order to appeal to children.

Hurley died of cardiac infarction on 16 January 1962 in Collaroy Plateau, New South Wales. His photographic work influenced later generations of photographers. Several of his films have been restored, with some regarded as classics in Australian cinema. He also published many books, and his diaries were published in 2011. Along with Mawson's and other books produced about Antarctica, Hurley's photographs and films helped to raise public awareness of the importance of preserving Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands from exploitation.