Shackleton Autumn School 2024 – Exhibition

Exploring in Colour
Jan Chojecki

Shackleton Museum Autumn School 2024

During the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition of 1921-1922, George Hubert Wilkins made a
series of colour photographs, or autochromes. These images depict Quest, landscapes of
South Georgia and its whaling stations, and the Shackleton memorial cairn at Grytviken with
the “Hope Cross” on the day of its completion. With colour photography in its infancy, very
few colour images were made on previous polar expeditions and so this collection of 30
pictures represents the only body of autochromes, or indeed colour photographs, of any
substance from the era. For a century, the original plates have lain in the archive of the
family of John Quiller Rowett, the businessman who financed the expedition. They have
never been shown as a complete set. A selection of the Wilkins Quest autochrome images
will be exhibited at the Autumn School, and Jan Chojecki, grandson of John Quiller Rowett
and author of The Quest Chronicle, will present their story.