Portrait of the corn stalk 2019

Curator: So striking. It’s sort of desolate, yet beautiful, in a severe, minimalist kind of way. The composition just leaps right out at you, doesn't it? Stark and proud. Editor: Yes, the photographic piece titled "Portrait of the corn stalk," taken by Alfred Freddy Krupa in 2019, is an arresting image, indeed. We see a single stalk against the backdrop of a crisp, unyielding sky. Curator: It makes you wonder about resilience. About how things stand alone and withstand, even when they seem depleted. Is it anthropomorphizing to feel a sense of, I don't know, fortitude radiating from it? Editor: I wouldn't say so. What is especially remarkable is that Krupa, here, foregrounds an otherwise discarded, commonplace element of agricultural production. In a world obsessed with the fruits of the harvest, it feels…almost like an elegy. An homage to the forgotten labor and eventual decay inherent in the agricultural cycle. Curator: Absolutely! And that stark realism, almost brutally honest. But there’s also poetry in its very dryness, don't you think? That texture—brittle and papery—almost begs you to reach out and touch it. A reminder of time's passage, certainly, and our own fragility. Editor: Indeed. In many ways, the very choice of focusing our attention so closely on what is, by its nature, decaying prompts questions about sustainability. Cornfields as monuments of modern production practices and all the contemporary cultural debates surrounding farming that intersect gender, labor and the economics of small-town life. Curator: Precisely, the dialogue here is one that pushes and prods… making us think deeply about time, endurance and perhaps even how beauty exists in unexpected places. I walked away with my head teeming, truly. Editor: The lens of contemporary theory gives this stalk of corn its power; situating something ostensibly mundane within the vast scope of social discourse. To examine decay, death, and dispossession as key points within contemporary practice is an insightful gift, for sure.