Climbing with Pieter Dirk van der Poel, Canton of Valais 1944

Curator: Robert Frank's 1944 gelatin-silver print, "Climbing with Pieter Dirk van der Poel, Canton of Valais," captures a climber amidst the dramatic Swiss Alps. What's your immediate reaction to this piece? Editor: Breathtaking scale, but also quite unsettling. The climber looks remarkably relaxed against this immense, almost hostile, landscape. It makes you wonder about man’s relationship with nature, this tiny figure set against such monumental geological power. Curator: It's interesting you pick up on the relaxed pose. Frank's work, particularly his later work, often explored the everyman in confrontation with power structures. Considering that Switzerland maintained neutrality during World War II, do you read this image as symbolic in any way, perhaps as a statement about Swiss identity or isolationism? Editor: Perhaps, but I think focusing solely on Switzerland misses some wider points. There is, without question, a very gendered visual history in such an image—consider Romantic landscape painting and early photography; they almost invariably placed a male subject as the viewer’s surrogate, 'conquering' the land by surveying it from its summit. I also notice an unsettling swagger of coloniality. Curator: Absolutely, the visual language resonates with tropes of exploration and dominion. Considering that Frank himself was a Swiss Jew who later immigrated to America, this photo could be an attempt to understand notions of home, belonging, and perhaps even a subtle critique of the national myths surrounding Swiss alpine culture. Editor: That’s well-put. Frank also made the subject of 'America' a key focus through photography and film. Maybe such images like this early piece helped to seed Frank's interest in wider questions of belonging and displacement, as well as what kind of cultural narratives were shaped and valued. Curator: So, ultimately, we have a photo that operates on multiple levels—a personal reflection on national identity intertwined with broader themes of gender, conquest, and place in a time of considerable upheaval. Editor: Indeed. And those complex ambiguities give it lasting power. A single frame contains whole histories of identity and belonging.