Australia
Frank Hurley
1885–1962 Official photographer, Australian Imperial Force, 1917–1918
Born in Glebe, Sydney, in 1885, Frank Hurley ran away as a boy to work in a steel mill and became a photographer known for the extravagant risks he took. After photographing Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition and Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition, he joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1917 as official photographer with the rank of honorary captain. At the Third Battle of Ypres he filmed exploding shells, and his Passchendaele photographs became some of his best known. He clashed with the official historian Charles Bean by merging negatives into composite pictures, which Bean called fakes. Hurley was then sent to Palestine, where he photographed the Light Horse. He served again as an official photographer in the Second World War and died on 16 January 1962.