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

Robert Frank made this photograph, *Climbing with Pieter Dirk van der Poel, Canton of Valais,* somewhere in Switzerland, and there’s this incredible drama unfolding between light and shadow. I can almost feel Frank’s breath, the crunch of snow, the thin air as he’s trying to capture this scene. It’s not just about the mountain, it’s about that moment when the light bursts through the clouds, illuminating the peak. He’s playing with tone, pushing the contrast to heighten the sense of the sublime. You know, it reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s cloud paintings, that same interest in capturing the uncapturable. What is it about painters and photographs that makes us want to arrest a moment of time and make it still?