{"id":1693525,"date":"2026-09-17T11:25:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1693525"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:11:31","slug":"art-photography-exhibition-what-holds-us-jimmy-chin-conrad-anker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/art-photography-exhibition-what-holds-us-jimmy-chin-conrad-anker\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Chin On Finding Beauty in Landscapes That Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jimmy Chin, Untitled 04<\/em>. Courtesy Jimmy Chin and Apple<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early this year, much of the world tuned in to watch Alex Honnold climb the Taipei 101 skyscraper live from Taiwan, but Honnold’s greatest achievement had already been captured on film long ago. Free Solo<\/i> (2018) documented his effort to become the first person to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan without ropes of any kind, and its shots are far more impressive than anything Netflix would ever produce.<\/p>\n

Those wild close-ups come courtesy of the film’s co-director Jimmy Chin. This week he was one of three artists in “What Holds Us,” a this-weekend-only group exhibition<\/a> in Chelsea presenting the work of Chin, Alex Prager and Jack Davison. (From there, the exhibition will travel to London and Shanghai.) Chin’s contribution features his typically gorgeous shots of mountains, in this case the Bugaboos in southeastern British Columbia. There are sweeping vistas, textured crags and a shot of his climbing partner Conrad Anker gazing at the snow-topped peaks that recalls the R\u00fcckenfigur of Caspar David Friedrich and the German Romantics.<\/p>\n

“Normally I don’t get the opportunity to go and just make art, just shoot for a show,” Chin, who worked with Apple on the project, told Observer. “It’s a more personal creative idea and vision that I could shoot to. It’s not to cover an editorial story, it’s not for a commercial client. They said, ‘Carte blanche.'” It was an opportunity he had to take, despite being on deadline for a book and a film.<\/p>\n

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