Alejandro Kuropatwa

A long trip through Europe took him to New York, where he discovered that his thing was photography, although he had studied painting. He bought a small used camera and after finalizing his studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design, he began an intense and brilliant career. “ Those were years of folly, of creation... times of lots of leather, sex, drugs and rock & roll... wonderful, we believed everything was possible. […] It was one of the best moments of my life and I have no regrets”, Kuropatwa revealed to the author of this article ( El ojo del que mira. Artistas de los Noventa, Fundación Proa, 1998). These “out of focus” photos reflect that long party, in which among other things “ we went in sober [to the discos], and came out totally high”.

The extravagant atmosphere of the suggestive photographs of Fuera de foco (1982) is not a product of chance. It is part of a process of aesthetic search, based on straight photography later elaborated and retouched in the laboratory. Manipulation and contrast made the shadows grow, and at the same time diluted the forms, blurred the outlines. This combination of experimental images radiates the artist’s vital and aesthetic freedom, which characterized his New York experience. Later on he specialized in portraits, straight but not objective photos of rock singers, figures of the Buenos Aires city underground, celebrities from the reality show showbiz, women of the social circuit. Renowned for his disquieting, and alternatively beautiful images with ironic notes, when he died of AIDS at the age of 47, Kuropatwa had already enjoyed recognition for many years, and been appreciated even for his political gestures linked to his illness.