A friend posted a new photo to his Facebook page tonight. It was taken a few years ago at Derwentwater in the UK, down on the edge of the lake where the row boats pull up on the shore. It prompted me to look for my own photo taken there in 1992, and to compare them … same place, different time, and the boats hadn’t changed at all!
Later in the evening I was reading the news about the journey of the Aurora Australis to Antarctica to mark the centenary of Douglas Mawson’s 1912 expedition. The internet being the wonderful place that it is, I was soon following links to photographs taken by Frank Hurley on that expedition, then photographs taken by him in France during the First World War, and then photographs taken in the Middle East during the Second World War.
I knew of Hurley’s work in Antarctica, and also of his war photography, but didn’t know that he also visited and photographed Petra sometime around 1943. So I started playing spot-the-difference again, comparing Hurley’s photographs with my own from October last year. How presumptuous!
I discovered that Petra hasn’t changed all that much in nearly 70 years. Except perhaps in the ease of travel. Hurley’s note on his photograph of Ad-Deir says this: “Situated to the s. e. of the Dead Sea. Practically impossible to reach today.” For air-conditioned buses, I am very, very thankful.
Rock Tombs at Petra, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c.1943
Rock tombs at Petra, digital image by me, 2011.
Glimpse of Petra Valley, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c.1943
Glimpse of Petra Valley, digital image by me, 2011
Huge temple cut in one piece from the mountain, Petra, Jordan, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c. 1943
Ad-Deir (The Monastery), digital image by me, 2011