“You know, we’re talking six days a week plus matinees, and the people always come from all over the country,” Gero said. My family knows I’m one of the people that works during the Christmas holidays.” “That doesn’t mean that you can sort of ease your way through it, that it doesn’t remain fresh. “Sure, it’s familiar, and it gets easier,” Gero said. Gero, who’s been a vivid presence as an actor, teacher, performer and good theater citizen on the Washington scene since 1981, was talking about his fourth gig playing Ebenezer Scrooge at Ford’s Theater, the theater’s yearly contribution to Washington holiday traditions. I think it’s getting into my DNA,” said Ed Gero, as we talked on the phone. Scrooge Each and Every Christmas Gary Tischler 15 - The Ralls Collection, 1516 31st St., NW 20. “The Photographs of Frank Hurley” through Dec. He was without question brave-he dove into icy waters to save negatives, then returned from his ordeal with the expeditions to jump into the midst of World War I, chronicling the fortunes and misfortunes of the Australian troops in France and at the battle of Ypres. But it’s the pictures that tell the story, keep it alive in the mind as fact, a living fact of what men can endure, of how precious and powerful the earth is, we and the creatures in it (In one image, a group of king penguins seem to be in conference.).Īccording to stories about Hurley, he was a taciturn sort of Australian who was a doer, a great maker of pictures and also maker of makeshift environments -a dark room on the ship. There have been books about the expedition, stories and tales and pictures, all of which has elevated the failed expedition to the realm of legend. Hurley’s pictures-including one showing him draped across a mast, or underneath the ship, at work-are famous. Especially haunting is an image of the Endurance at night. Against the vast expanse of ice, the ship at times seems like a toy, the men working on the ice stick figures. The ship seems at once a powerful contraption and one totally in the grip of helplessness. The look is almost fantastic, like a visual tall tale, except, of course, that they’re real images, especially the photographs of the ship frozen in tundras of ice. The photographs in the Ralls exhibition appear to encompass the first year of the crew’s stay on the Endurance before it sank. His photographic results led to his appointment on the Endurance. Hurley was no stranger to the Antarctic, having accompanied Australian explorer Douglas Mawson on a trip to the Antarctic on the Nimrod. Each pictures seems to contain a frozen story. Hanging on the walls of her gallery in Georgetown, the images make an odd assemblage-they’re full of the kind of grandeur and stories that keep trying to escape the boundaries of their frames and edges. Marsha Ralls bought 35 of Hurley’s photos from the National Geographic Society 35 years ago and ended up keeping them. Shackleton’s journey was a failure but in an age of brave exploration his survival and the rescue of his crew became a legendary story-a legend built on solid, black-and-white evidence that came with almost artful emotional content. All of the members of the expedition survived. After a harrowing 800-mile journey, he returned with help to rescue the rest of his crew, including Hurley. They moved to a barren island from which Shackleton set sail with five men on one of the lifeboats to try and reach a whaling station in the South Atlantic. The men were then forced to live in what they managed to construct out of what was left of the lifeboats, subsisting on penguin and sea lion meat, until they were eating boiled bones. Instead, the Endurance-it was named after a Shackleton family motto–was trapped in the ice along with the crew, which remained on the ship for a year until it sank. His expedition-named the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition-never accomplished that. Shackleton was attempting to become the first man to lead an expedition that would walk across the Antarctic from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. They were leaving behind England and Europe, where World War I was just beginning. 15 to catch the exhibition, “The Photographs of Frank Hurley.” You want white-you’ve got white-the white of Antarctic ice, icebergs, ice floes and snow and blizzards, as endured by the men of 360-foot wooden ship Endurance, all part of a mission by English explorer Ernest Shackleton, who set sail for the Antarctic in August of 1914 with his crew and official photographer, an Australian by the name of Frank Hurley. If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, you might wander over to the Ralls Collection before it’s too late. Hurley’s Icy Images of Shackleton’s Trek at Ralls Collection Gary Tischler
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