Through the Lens of Dr. Frederick A. Cook A Comprehensive Exhibition of Arctic and Antarctic photography Opening This Summer 2022 • June 10th

The Frederick Cook Society will present an exhibition of over 50 photographs taken by Dr. Frederick Cook, between the years 1891-1908, during his expeditions to Greenland, Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, Mount Denali and the North Pole. The exhibition will include photos of sailing ships, polar landscapes, and a large collection of rare photographs of the Inuit and indigenous people. It is a well-known fact among Cook scholars that Dr. Cook was an excellent photographer. Author Julian Sancton, who recently published a book about Dr. Cook and the famous journey of the Belgica entitled “Madhouse at the End of the Earth”, has this to say about the exhibition… “Frederick Cook is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in the history of polar exploration. He is remembered today primarily for his disputed claim to having reached the North Pole, and for his stint in Leavenworth penitentiary later in the 1920s. But many chapters of his novelistic life remain grossly underexplored. Among them is his passion for photography. A skilled autodidact, Cook created breathtaking images of the Polar Regions, including the first known photographs of Antarctica, from 1898. Hired as the physician of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-99, he also served as the mission’s official photographer and ethnographer. In those roles, he took numerous photographs of the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego, including the Yamana and the Sel’knam. They remain precious documents of these long-lost tribes. There has never, to my knowledge, been a serious exhibit of Cook’s photos. The show we have in mind would not only be aesthetically transfixing, but would also allow for a reexamination of Cook’s legacy.”