Switzerland B 1952

Editor: We're looking at Robert Frank’s "Switzerland B" from 1952, a gelatin silver print. It’s laid out as the original contact sheet with multiple exposures. It gives the sense of peeking into the artist’s life or perhaps a family's daily life, from portraits to mealtime and even caring for a baby. What symbols or cultural markers do you see here? Curator: Well, this isn't a typical curated photo; it’s raw, an unedited collection of moments. The family portraits and the dining scene point to rituals – familial bonding, shared meals, those sorts of things. It's about documenting everyday life, but I wonder, what feeling do you get from this 'unedited' format? Does it change how you view it, compared to, say, a single, chosen portrait? Editor: It feels more honest, less staged, and perhaps gives more weight to even the seemingly unimportant moments, since he photographed them. Is it trying to say something about the culture through ordinary activities? Curator: Absolutely! And look at the series of images within the strips – repetition, slight variations, tell a deeper story, building to collective memory, family histories… the almost identical images draw attention to these micro-narratives, like individual frames from memory itself. They seem intimate yet distant, echoing a universality, like fragmented stories anyone could experience. What remains when you extract the "B" side of life, the outtakes? What kind of archive would it represent? Editor: So the symbols are less explicit objects and more how the scenes function culturally? The whole contact sheet is itself a symbol of memory. I never considered that before. Curator: Precisely! The work reflects more on how imagery shapes narratives over time. That raw, ‘unedited’ presentation helps. We participate as viewers.