Captain Cook

Narrator: In order to see the people and happenings of our world, we have always relied on the images created by those who were there. Or who imagined the scene. For the past 100 years this has meant that our view of the world and its events has been through the viewfinder of photojournalism.

Long before photography, in the 1700s when Captain James Cook was chartering the open seas, the images of record were the responsibility of such artists as John Webber who, whilst a member of Cook’s crew over many voyages, created paintings and drawings of the situations and people the explorers encountered.

These were encounters with places and people which were, up to that time, unheard of and unknown, places such as Australia, and the Pacific, and Hawaiian islands beyond it.

It was through the art of men like John Webber and John Cleveley, who was also a member of Captain Cook’s crew, that the world was first able to see the tragedy of Cook’s murder by Hawaiian islanders, a sensational event that has been interpreted by many artists. Some, painting long after the incident, have brought increasing layers of imagination to the facts.

But these are the images that have formed our belief in how things really were, just as today’s photojournalism encourages us to believe that we are seeing the truth.