Mountaineers question whether the South African Everest team ever really reached the summit. Justin Pearce and Gaye Davis report
A row is brewing over who owns the still-unpublised photos of the South African Everest team at the summit.
Everest expedition leader Ian Woodall says he is holding on to the photos of the South African team at the summit — leading to speculation that the team never reached the highest point on earth, and setting the stage for a legal showdown with the Sunday Times and Out There magazine.
At a press conference this week, UCT sports scientist Professor Tim Noakes said until Woodall and fellow-climber Cathy O’Dowd produced pictures, they could not be considered to have reached the summit.
“It is not an established fact there was a South African flag flying from the summit,” he said.
Asked whether the photos would eventually be published, Woodall joked “we’ll probably get round to it,” but added, “definitely not in a newspaper”. The Mail & Guardian understands Woodall is negotiating with one or more book publishers, which may be offering a higher fee for previously unpublished photos.
He laughed out loud at the suggestion that there were no photos of the team at the summit.
Woodall and O’Dowd maintain they own copyright on the pictures, a view supported by Kodak South Africa, which is engaged in processing the more than 15 000 frames taken during the expedition.
“Since the Sunday Times withdrew sponsorship, Woodall and O’Dowd own 100% copyright on the photos,” said Kodak’s sales and marketing manager Grant Bester.
But Sunday Times editor Brian Pottinger said the paper believed it retained the right to publish the Everest photographs, despite withdrawing from the expedition after conflict with Woodall.
“There are contractual obligations on both sides.
Although we withdrew from the expedition, our legal advice is that the essence of the contract remains,” Pottinger said.
Though Pottinger said the Sunday Times was not contemplating any particular course of action against Woodall at the moment, he said the newspaper had been advised that “if the photographs were published elsewhere, they [the Everest team] may well be in breach of contract”.
Monica Graaff, editor of Out There, said the magazine retains the rights to the first magazine publication of the photos. Although owned by Times Media Limited, the magazine did not pull out of the expedition when the Sunday Times did.
Pottinger added Kodak had not released pictures which the Sunday Times wanted: “Kodak has made available to us certain pictures, but not the one we wanted to see which is the one of the climbers on the peak. There is still confusion in our minds as to whether that picture was shown by Woodall at the presentation.”
Woodall and O’Dowd presented a slide show at a Johannesburg hotel last Friday and charged R100 per person. The show prompted questions by the Sunday Times whether the photographs of the two at the summit were authentic or not.
Bester laughed at Pottinger’s accusations, saying the Sunday Times had never asked for photos since the paper severed ties with Woodall, with the sole exception of a photo of the climbers returning to Johannesburg International Airport.
Woodall and O’Dowd are adamant there is ample photographic evidence of their ascent of the summit, and refuted suggestions that the photos supposedly of the summit were not genuine. Bester also dismissed the allegations, saying he had seen digital camera images which clearly proved the team had reached the top.
“Whoever says the photos were fabricated needs their head read. Obviously they showed the less interesting photos at the slide show and the better ones will be published later.”
Asked why only a few photos said to be taken at the summit were shown at the slide show, O’Dowd said: “It’s not about being on top. It’s about getting there.”
But several South African mountaineers have expressed surprise that a photo of the team at the summit had not been made available soon after the expedition.
Usually such a photograph is regarded as positive proof that the team reached the summit, and it is unusual for no such photo to have been published almost six weeks after the expedition reached the summit.
“If you call yourself a national expedition, you have an obligation to the nation to prove you were there,” remarked climber Duncan Elliott, who accompanied the Everest expedition to base camp to cover it for Out There magazine.
Woodall has in turn accused Elliott of “stealing” photographs from the expedition and publishing them in Out There, an accusation flatly rejected by Elliott and by Graaff, who said the photos had been legitimately obtained from Kodak and from Apple, the computer company which digitised the images.
O’Dowd was unconcerned about the lack of evidence of having reached the summit. “We know what we did,” she said.