I finally got the book “Alfred Gregory’s Everest”. Alfred Gregory was
selected for the 1953 John Hunt’s expedition, the first to reach the
Everest peak, taking in consideration his experience as mountaineer.
He also was an enthusiast photographer and then John Hunt decided to
put him in charge of the expedition still photography; Gregory also
was the expedition “postman”.
The book was published in 1993 by Constable & Co, Hampshire, UK, 184
thick pages, they are about 19cm x 26.5cmsize plenty of large B&W
photographs, hard cover, excellent edition. It has a foreword by Jan
Morris, “The Times” newspaper correspondent and only reporter for the
expedition. The book also has a large “Introduction” written by Alfred
Gregory where he comments about expedition and book from different
angles and doing comparisons between 1953 and 1991, I mention and
summarize some photographic points only.
The last time Alfred Gregory had seen his films was when he packed
them up and handed them to a runner somewhere high in the Himalaya in
1953, “I have always wanted to present my black and white pictures
from this great expedition in my own way but the negatives have not
been available to me” due to copyrights arrangements, “it was only in
the autumm of 1991 that I saw them for the first time since 1953”. He
became very satisfied to have his beloved negatives in his own
professional darkroom to print them according he visualized the
pictures when he shot the film and after to see for so many years his
pictures were used over and over again in books and periodicals.
Gregory writes that “in forty years no one has printed them” with the
same care he could give them. Many of the negatives were badly
scratched, he spent long hours of carefuly retouching to rectify this.
“The Times“ pictures editor was very worried in 1953 about the 35mm
film images quality and sent Gregory a Super Ikonta 2 ½ x 3 ½ format,
“it was a good camera with a beautiful Zeiss lens but with its bellows
it was awkward and I found it clumsy to use in the difficult cold
conditions high on Everest”.
“My 35mm cameras were a Contax and a Kodak-Retina 2. The Contax, with
50mm and 135mm interchangeable lenses, was my main camera for colour
but when I went high on the South-East Ridge, to almost 28,000 feet, I
carried the more compact Retina up to the highest camp. Throughout
that day I only shot Kodachrome from which excellent black and white
negatives were made later. I also took a twins-lens Rolleiflex which I
used for black and white. Despite being more bulky than the Contax and
Retina it was extremely easy to use and with its superb Zeiss lens it
was capable of producing pictures of exquisite quality ; I took it as
far as the South Col and the final results made the extra effort well
worth while. When in recent years these three cameras were stolen I
felt I had lost a very real part of history” (page 16), and then the
Rolleiflex was working at about 26,000 feet (8.000 meters) on the
Everest South Col.
Gregory used Panatomic X for the Rolleiflex, rated ASA 32 “I found I
had been right to shoot on fine-grain film like Panatomic X for the
pictures taken with my Rolleiflex are grainless...”. Gregory was very
worried about the right exposure on the snow up to his received this
message from Kodak: “Kodachrome batch received results excellent
congratulations Kodak.”, he adds “it is interesting to recall the only
Kodachrome film then on the market was rated Weston 8 (ASA 10!)”.
The B&W photographs in the book are excellent, the Rolleiflex shots
keep the square format or almost the square format and are grainless
really, two or three of the 35mm shots show a slight grain in the sky
due to the images are large indeed.
When Gregory and Lowe and Ang Nyma established the last camp for
Hillary and Tenzing second and final assault to the main peak at
almost 28,000 feet (Everest has 29,000 feet on the sea level), Gregory
took some photographs with the Retina 2 about Hillary and Tenzing
climbing to the camp, one of them shows Tenzing ice axe with the flags
he would put on the peak the next day.
“...Most of Gregory’s photographs, his record of these responses, have
remained unseen for forty years. Those that have previously been
published have all to often been unworthily reproduced. It is only
now, in this volume, that we can see for ourselves how grandly the
experience of Everest touched him...” (Jan Morris in the book
Foreword).
Carlos
PS: Alfred Gregory passed away some months ago, he was 97 years old.
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