Snapshot
Collection Spotlight
Event Horizon by Ada Crow
Proof of Work: A PhotoVerso Retrospective
Overheard
The Merge and our JPGs
RawsSyndicate x Arttaca Grant
Collector’s Corner
Why Art Writing Matters
Collection Spotlight
Event Horizon by Ada Crow
An event horizon is the outer border of a black hole: the perimeter of the area from within which, all matter is sucked into a void by the undeniable force of gravity. Even light, which is made of matter at its foundational level, disappears into nothingness under the inextricable pull of a hyper-dense mass.
Ada Crow’s collection of portraits is a (dis)embodied manifestation of this phenomenon. The images are curious and haunting: if they had eyes, Ada’s sitters would be staring back at us with indifference so intense, it’s undeniable.
In Red Wedding, dry wood chips and lush bamboo surround headless sitters dressed for cold weather. The couple is posed rigidly on old fashioned chairs, reminiscent of an overly formal portrait set in a dated living room. Her deep red wool coat matches the bouquet of roses replacing his head. The lifeless dry leaves sitting on her shoulders match the color of the ground cover, while his long coat compliments the foliage. They hold hands. The images are simultaneously cozy and uncomfortable, lush and lifeless, lost and at home. Nothing makes sense.
Ada’s work is full of internal contradiction. Event Horizon is a collection where domestic bliss meets surrealist horror, collapsing into a black hole that takes her subjects to another realm, leaving only well-placed pops of color in its wake.
In Memoirs of a Goldfish, we’re confronted with a ballerina in lavender slippers and a skirt, sitting in a chair dressed with lavender upholstery, next to a side table with a bouquet of lavender peonies. She holds a bowl containing a goldfish (also lavender), and wears a white fur jacket. In place of a head, she had a hand dangling twine into the bowl. We can only ask ourselves — why?
The strange characters in Ada’s bizarre scenes are brought to you courtesy of Ada’s friends, family, and the photographer herself. In the surrealist tradition following the footsteps of Magritte and Dali, Ada places herself and her familiars in a disturbed and unnatural dimension where everyone’s lost their mind, although they may yet have the (frequently chilly) comforts of home.
Ada’s work is heavily inspired by romantic and expressionist movements, with surrealist and Dadaist undercurrents. In Gravitational Singularity, the gloomy weather and drab, over-grown concrete perfectly captures the dejected attitude of the business man staring at the basketball hoop. The heavy atmosphere of the work is only disturbed by the ridiculous substitution of his head with an orange balloon.
Growing up in Northern Spain, Ada started bussing tables and answering phones to support her family at an early age. At the age of 38, she returned to school to pursue her life-long passion for the arts, eventually earning a degree in Art History at the University of Oviedo. After suffering a stroke, she picked up a camera to dedicate herself fully to image-making.
This course of affairs may explain why Ada’s work is simultaneously aesthetic, familiar, and haunting. The images in event horizon pull us in with lovely visual compliments pastel pinks and polkadots and homey, kitsch scenes before turning the concept completely by confronting us the void: important elements that while suggested, aren’t really there.
You can see Event Horizon here
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Proof of Work
A PhotoVerso Retrospective
After the Merge of the Ethereum Mainnet with the beacon chain in the early hours of September 15th, PhotoVerso (like the rest of Web3) is leaving the high-energy Proof of Work days behind in search of greener pastures in the Proof of Stake era.
In celebration of the milestone, PhotoVerso presents a brief retrospective on blockchain photography during the times of Proof of Work. The collections presented were chosen for their role in the founding narratives of many of the organizations and institutions blockchain photography considers community pillars.
Twin Flames by Justin Aversano
For many collectors, the story of blockchain photography began with the chapter of American photographer Justin Aversano’s “Twin Flames”.
Shot between May 2017 and June 2018, the collection was released as a 100 piece series in February 2021. Twin Flames is a series of images featuring twins around the world, reflecting messages on identity, unity, and intimacy. With its seriality and structural similarity to collectibles projects, the collection welcomed hundreds of artists and collectors to blockchain photography, ultimately culminating in the creation of the curated platform Quantum Art. The platform has since supported the production of spectacular work including Touching Strangers (Richard Rinaldi), Afromythology (Shawn Theodore) and Homegrown (Julie Blackmon).
50 Carpoolers by Alejandro Cartagena
An iconic collection, Alejandro Cartagena’s 50 Carpoolers found its niche well before blockchain photography became a movement. The series captures the daily commute of Mexican laborers from distant suburbs to urban centers. Often shot sprawled out and surrounded by debris in the back of trucks, the series explores themes of masculinity, vulnerability, and the impacts of urbanisation on every day life.
The success of Carpoolers led to the formation of ObscuraDAO, an organization that supports emerging blockchain photographers. Established by Alejandro alongside Cooper Ray and Tony Herrera, Obscura has been responsible for deploying millions of dollars in grants, which led to the development of groundbreaking collections including Cristina de Middel’s “The Royal Pinedo”, Hannah Whitaker’s “Ursula 3”, and Rueben Wu’s “Aeroglyph Variations”.
Who We Are 200 by ObscuraDAO
ObscuraDAO’s first grant, funded via PaisanDAO, sought to commission a collective portrait of the Web3 community through a formative season of growth. As NFTs entered the collective imagination in early summer 2021, ObscuraDAO sought to document the faces building the space through it’s early days by commissioning 100 photographers to find subjects and plan shots with $1000 grants. The resulting collection is a diverse and touching depiction of blockchain photography’s early roots.
Who We Are has a few pieces available and you can see it here
Overheard
The Merge and our JPGs
With The Merge on the way, SuperRare and Foundation reminded the community that all NFTs are safe and need no further action from users.
RawsSyndicate x Arttaca Grant
Arttaca.io and RawsSyndicate teamed up with the Bandung Photography Month to grant one photographer $600 to work on a new project or resume works ongoing. Artists has until Sept 30th to apply using the form in the link below.
Collector’s Corner
Why Art Writing Matters
“Art commentary should make works of art more real”
Susan Sontag
In the pre-modern era, art was the domain of particularly the aristocratic class: as patrons and buyers of art, royalty also had the unspoken mandate of determining what was good art for its age.
Though art criticism lacks a recorded history, it debatably emerged in tandem with democracy during the French Revolution. The primary function was to help create consensus opinion around and promote those works that pushed the boundaries of art and provided meaningful contribution to culture and the material tradition. With the rise of conceptualism, the role of art criticism (now more commonly called interpretation or contextualization) has shifted to providing viewers of art with an entry point to approach the subject matter and material.
Among various visual art forms, photographs have a particular relationship with written words.
On the one hand, photographs stand out as the most easily interpreted constructed images by a large margin. Even the purpose of photography as documenting the human experience (versus presenting us with images that take us to a different reality) gestures towards a privilege photography has over other art forms in terms of accessibility and interpretability by the average viewer.
On the other, both the rapid technological innovation which allowed photography to advance as an art form and the ongoing tension photographs have with a desire to represent images beyond the experienced world, create a certain reliance on written words for photographers to help their viewers understand the meaning of the art beyond outside of what’s evidently visible.
As art becomes richer in its references to current events, history, and artistic tradition, art words support viewers in accessing, appreciating, understanding, and ultimately enjoying art. Photographs especially lean on art words to communicate with viewers, revealing both meaning and methodology to support interpretation of the work.