JJ L'Heureux
Artist Statement
My Sir Ernest Shackleton Hut photographs are intended to illuminate, and celebrate Shackleton’s time at Cape Royds. This project is an unfinished chapter in my 18-year-odyssey to Antarctica with 18 expeditions.
Like Frank Hurley—Shackleton’s expedition photographer—my first purpose was to photograph the rich environment of ice, but larger insights into Antarctica and its history developed.
To succeed in getting to places as Cape Royds, in the Ross Sea, involves a difficult sea voyage as well as the high probability that one will not be able to land. Once landed there is a long, uphill, climb in icy and windy conditions past a huge, Adélie Penguin colony.
Shackleton's Hut 1, 2013, Photograph, $1,200.00
The small, unpainted hut is at the end of this struggle as it was for Shackleton and the men who lived there for more than a year. The stove was the sole generator of warmth, and also the center of social as well as physical survival for the men. This Shackleton series is my homage and celebration to the spirit of the place.
Shackleton's Stove, 2013, Photograph, $1,200.00
Colman Boots 2, 2013, Photograph, $1,200.00
