Snapshot

Notable Drops

• Roberto Salazer

• Alyssa Kazew

The Latest

• Imag3Aid

• Assembly

• KGPNFT

• Obscura

• RawDAO

• Reuben Wu

Photographer of the Week

• Nyimas Laula

Collector’s Corner

• Wen Utility?

Bookshelf

• Photography Changes Everything by Marvin Heiferman

Notable Drops

Roberto Salazar - Portable Network Graphics

Post-photographic artist Roberto Salzar’s recently released collection Portable Network Graphics brings viewers on a visual-philosophical jaunt through the nature of digital image files. By utilizing common photo editing tools and applying functions repeatedly over images, Salazar breaks down photographs into abstracted glitches, mirroring but not adhering to algorithmic-based auto-generated imagery that is prominent in the NFT space. 

https://opensea.io/collection/png-redacted

Alyssa Kazew - But That’s So Far Away

Alyssa Kazew’s collection But That’s So Far Away is a body of work produced over the course of a decade and covers a broad swath of aesthetic and conceptual territory. With volumes of humor, irony, campiness, and crudeness, Kazew’s work takes viewers on an odyssey as a “wild expression of hedonistic joy, self-deprecating humor, performance art, and sex positivity.” The collection draws parallels to photographers like David Brandon Geeting and Roe Etheridge who defy expectations of photographic convention, and challenge audiences with unexpected visual vocabularies and tongue-in-cheek visual phrasing. 

https://opensea.io/collection/but-thats-so-far-away

The Latest

Imag3Aid

Last week we released a special issue spotlighting some of our favorite images from the Imag3Aid collection, organized by a group of photographers to raise money for Ukrainian humanitarian aid. The project announced its first donation of 12.5 ETH, nearly $40,000, to its donation partner, The Giving Block. 

It was also announced that both the Fellowship Trust and prominent photo collector Sashaku have minted the entire 57-image collection, and that there are allowlist spots that are still available for other collectors to purchase the collection for 2.85 ETH.

Assembly

Assembly is currently running a giveaway for a piece from Hannah Whitaker’s collection, Ursula. The giveaway runs until April 19th at 12pm EST, and our readers can register via Premint.

The platform has also partnered up with well known photography gallerist Sasha Wolf to release its next collection, One Star and a Dark Voyage, by photographer Barbara Bosworth. The drop is scheduled for April 20th.

KGP NFT

KGPNFT announced its second NFT photobook, forthcoming on April 26th by founder and namesake, Kris Graves. The book, “What Came True,” is made up of work from 7 distinct projects from Graves, with each edition including 4 of the 7 projects. A total of 17 different book combinations encompass the editions, and each mint will include a 1/1 photograph from the book. 

The title follows the debut release from the platform, MorningStar by Marshall Scheuttle.

Obscura

This week Obscura released the latest collection from it’s Curated Commission series, a body of work by photographer Tania Franco Klein titled Subject Studies. The project conveys cinematic narrative moments by multiple subjects playing the same character as a means to deconstruct the empirical illusion of narrative, challenging viewer perception of meaning of any given moment.

RawDAO

RawDAO announced two new acquisitions this week. The first was a purchase of pieces from each of the Obscura Foundry Commission artists, Fernando Gallegos, Claudia Pawlak, Gregory Eddi Jones, Mickey Smith, and Josip Artukovic. 

The second acquisition is a piece from the Strong Hair collection by Yatreda, a photographer collective based in Ethiopia that creates innovative motion portraits that spotlight unique hairstyles of Africa.

Reuben Wu

We don’t normally include individual artists in this section, but Reuben Wu’s recent Fourteenth Century Series bears mentioning because the artist himself is quickly becoming an institution in the NFT photography space.

The collection is comprised of 201 individual still frames from a single moving media piece that represents Wu’s hallmark visual signatures. Combining landscape and in-camera lighting dynamics, the project recently revealed on Foundation after a week of pre-sales. Proceeds from the collection will be used to provide seed funding to blockchain projects that “drive innovation, sustainability, and futurism."

Photographer of the Week: Nyimas Laula

Indonesian photographer Nyimas Laula is known for her journalistic work that covers human rights and environmental issues, and her work has been published widely in publications such as New York Times, VICE, and National Geographic. While recognized for her focus on documenting pressing societal issues, her NFT drop, 30 Shapes of Me, turns the lens back on herself for an introspective and kaleidoscopic series of self-portraits that represents the pluralities of her own identity. While many self-portrait projects are made with narrow aesthetic and technical parameters, Laula acknowledges the complexities of persona identity, and the many different sides of the self that can manifest within different social contexts.

PhotoVerso: Can you tell us about your background as a photographer?

Nyimas Laula: I am an Indonesian photojournalist whose works focus on environmental and human rights issues across the country. In 2015, I documented the arrival of Rohingya refugees in Aceh and covered one of the worst forest fires in the country's history for Greenpeace. For six months in 2019, I follow the trail of plastic pollution on the island of Bali and document the initiatives which begin to arise to tackle the issue. My work is among others recently displayed in a collective exhibition by UNDP on Far-Reaching Fallout of COVID-19 at Photoville in Brooklyn, NYC, 2020. My work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Washington Post Magazine, among others.

PV: What inspires you as a photographer and what do you hope audiences take away from your work?

NL: I take inspirations to many things in my daily life, books, film, songs, anime, or even an everyday mundane scene. My photojournalism work focuses more on echoing the voices of people that often unheard or deliberately silenced.

PV: What's the scoop with your latest NFT drop?

NL: As a photojournalist, people love to define me and single me out into one thing, putting me in a box of categories. fit me into certain social standards. I should be male-passing to do the job. "You can't be this because you are this", "you should be A because you're a B". There is no single thing that can define me because as a human, I'm so much more than that. Shapes of Me is an ongoing self-portraits series representing multi facades and complexity of my identity, in the social context that restricts me, at the same time, giving me the freedom to explore. The series explores the connection between body images and beauty standards, personal ideas about oneself, living with chronic disease, and reclaiming trauma. Shapes of Me is a celebration of myself as a complete human being, with all my greatness, quirkiness, and flaws.

Collector’s Corner

Wen Utility?

Truth be told, most photography NFT collectors don’t have the same expectations for utilities and perks that PFP collectors have. Still, its worth discussing the types of benefits, or perks, that buying artwork can provide. Most PFP collections offer “utility”, value-adds that incentivize collectors to buy and hold pieces for future benefits that include things like merchandise, free airdrops, access to IRL events, etc… More sophisticated collections have ventured into more complex benefits like staking rewards.

The culture of NFT collections has come to expect a robust reward system for ownership, but how does this carry over to the world of buying artwork? Many photographers offer small prints or copies of books to collectors who buy their work. Some have their own discords where their collectors can mingle, providing a sense of community among like-minded aesthetic connoisseurs. Beyond these simple benefits, is it fair for collectors to expect more out of artists?

Much of this depends on why you’re collecting in the first place. By now its clear that PFP projects provide far more liquidity to owners looking to flip their holdings to resell for a profit. Artist collections are far smaller, more expensive, and less likely to undergo significant price swings that benefits short-term investors.

Collectors of art and photography are a different breed. Most photo collectors we speak to have long time horizons and no exit strategies. They collect to own, rather than to flip. Its fair to wonder if artists should consider how to “gamify” their collections to appeal to more casual collectors, however doing so takes time and attention away from their focus on their practice itself and the continued development of their work. Far more than the typical PFP collection, ownership of 1/1 photographs provides its own unique form of utility, that of identity of patronage, vision and taste.

Bookshelf

Book of the Week: Photography Changes Everything by Marvin Heiferman

Edited by curator Marvin Heiferman, Photograph Changes Everything is a collection of short texts from a range of different artists and photographers that provide numerous perspectives on the ways in which photographs operate in the contemporary world.

Insights on how photographs capture attention, package values, and affect world views are a few areas in which the book provides deeper understanding on photography’s past and present as a cultural force.

https://aperture.org/books/photography-changes-everything/