Motion picture camera

Held in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, Canberra

THIS PIECE OF EARLY 20thcentury cinematography technology was used by great Australian photographer and filmmaker Frank Hurley for a large part of his career. It’s a Debrie Parvo model L 35mm hand-crank movie camera.

Sydney-born Hurley was official photographer on the 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson. He was back on the icy continent soon after that journey, photographing Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It was on this expedition that he took his famous shots of the ship Endurance being slowly crushed by pack ice. After the marooned crew was rescued from South Georgia island and returned home, Hurley worked as a war photographer during World War I.

He bought this camera to take to Antarctica when he returned to the icy continent for a third time, on the 1929–31 British, Australian and

New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition. Hurley described the camera in his diary as “a glorious piece of mechanism and the ideal of perfection for my work”. He used it to shoot scenes of life on board the ship Discovery, wildlife and scientific research, and on his return to Australia made a documentary, Siege of the South. He went on to use it for the next 30 years, filming the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and making propaganda films during World War II.