Guy Bourdin has a new NFT exhibition

A new organisation is bringing the world’s leading photographers to the blockchain

Created by a group of “artists, collectors, and smart leaders”, the Fellowship is a photography organisation which aims to bridge the worlds of art, photography, and Web3. The organisation invites audiences across the globe to discover and collect the work of some of the most significant photographic practitioners of past and present. It’s founders include artists Alejandro Cartagena, Chadwick Tyler, and photographer Caroline Gutman.

Wait, what is an NFT again?

Non-fungible token. “Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing. A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible. If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something completely different.

NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos.

Save the date:

Fellowship will host its latest NFT auctions from 2 August 2022, presenting three artworks by Gregory Crewdson: Untitled (2002) from the series Dream House; Woman in Bathroom (2013)  from the series Cathedral of the Pines, and Redemption Center (2018-2019) from the series An Eclipse of Moths. The artwork will be showcased in an accessible way through a rotating spotlight.

Crewdson’s exhibition will be followed by a series of weekly auctions by Guy Bourdin (which according to the website will drop in September), Katy Grannan, Joel Sternfeld, László Moholy-Nagy, Pieter Hugo, Hank Willis Thomas, Mitch Epstein, Joel Meyerowitz and Laurie Simmons. 

NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied: ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a print. But only one person can own the original.

“We believe the digital art market is just getting started. We looked around and didn’t see a space that showed up for artists, so we built it. Fellowship is creating new opportunities and best practices for photographers at every stage in their career to create, exhibit and reach new audiences via the virtual realm,” the founders of Fellowship explained in a statement, “We’re pushing photography forward by offering an extension of the artist’s presentation model beyond prints. We’ve imagined a future where everyone can visit our collection to be inspired by the world’s best photography.”