6x9 (Cars. A view from my balcony) 1988

Editor: We’re looking at "6x9 (Cars. A view from my balcony)" by Alfred Freddy Krupa, a photograph from 1988. The long exposure makes car lights look like streams of light flowing down the street. There is a lonely tree. There is a sense of melancholy here, maybe even isolation? What's your take? Curator: Isolation, absolutely! It's funny how a simple street scene can feel like a confession. The light streaks, to me, aren’t just cars but moments, fleeting and indistinct. Does that baroque building seem so stable, almost monolithic, to you against the transience? A counterpoint maybe to Krupa's fleeting, artistic life. It makes you wonder, what was happening in his world when he captured this? What was he leaving behind as his “legacy?” Editor: That’s interesting, I hadn't thought of it that way, legacy building versus Krupa’s lifestyle. Curator: He often uses unconventional materials. Look closely; is that photo itself dissolving a little? It lends a temporal fragility and is the real photograph or the memory itself eroding? It adds to that sense of yearning. The "now you see it, now you don't." Do you think the balcony view isolates us further, separates us, from this flow of urban life, or it offers some needed distance to it? Editor: I get it. The distance makes it like viewing a dreamscape or a personal film instead of plain reality. The blurry lights become more suggestive, more abstract. Curator: Exactly! And isn’t it odd how even in this "snapshot" – something so ordinary -- Krupa hints at larger human truths, bigger social structures. It’s there if we pause to consider it. Editor: So, it’s a seemingly simple shot loaded with hidden layers of personal and historical meaning? Curator: Bingo! What I’m leaving with is the idea of photography that dissolves under time; almost a metaphor of all that we build can disappear one day. So don’t focus on what you’re leaving behind… but enjoy what’s now.