Few images are more strange and haunting than those discovered on some frozen film in 1930. They reveal the mysterious fate of the S. A. Andrée Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, where a hot air balloon meant to sail over the North Pole instead crashed into the ice.
The men were completely unprepared for a land expedition, and set up camp on the uninhabited White Island in the Svalbard archipelago. There, the Arctic winter eventually consumed them and they perished in the unforgiving environment of ice and howling winds.
What happened on this expedition was just a more serious of the type of situation Blake describes. The photographs would not have nearly the same bite and fascinating quality if we didn’t know about the attached tragedy. It’s not such a terrible thing for a photographer to draft in the wake of some history.