From the Darkroom to the Limelight
The Longtime Development of Photo NFTs
Above: Blessed, 2019 | Guadalupe by Amanda Lopez
By Tom White
The old adage goes “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That may well be true, however, the way things are going in the land of non-fungible tokens (i.e. NFTs), a picture will soon be worth not only a thousand words, but also many thousands of dollars.
The market for NFTs exploded in 2021. There is no other word to describe such staggering, rapid, exponential growth.
Largely driven by generative art and Bored Ape-style profile pictures (i.e. PFPs), these manifestations serve as identities of sorts to indicate social standing, status, and prestige, calling to mind Balaji Srinivasan’s innovative pseudonymous economy framework.
This impressive run-up has many creators, investors, speculators, and technologists eagerly asking: What’s next?
Well, the truth is much stranger than fiction and, as such, Photo NFTs (Non-Fungible Photographs or “NFPs” perhaps?) seem next up in the cascade of artistic mediums making the jump to the pixelated world of digital marketplaces.
While not insignificant, the market’s interest to date in NFPs has paled in comparison to the hype garnered by its generative and PFP-based cousins.
That is very much about to change.
With all of the fanfare surrounding projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2021, the market has begun to be saturated with similar efforts. All that seems to be missing from this tried and tested playbook is a collection of Asinine Alliterative Apes.
The kinds of art best poised to be owned on-chain far outnumber the few that have been collected most obsessively so far. In short, we are still so damn early.
Because of this, creators and collectors alike are searching for blue sky—a new NFT medium through which to express and in which to invest.
So why NFPs in particular?
For one, we are already witnessing the very beginnings of their budding ascent. The historic 2021 sale of a piece from Justin Aversano’s groundbreaking Twin Flames collection at Christie’s for $1.1M points to this fact. Much like how Beeple’s eye-popping Everydays sale brought a rush of interest to the digital art market, projects like this stand to do the same for photography. The world is taking notice of creatives like Justin (and those savvy investors, collectors, and enthusiasts buying his work) and is beginning to follow suit.
Further, photography exists as a powerful artistic medium that sits right at home in the digital world. By capturing and immortalizing slices of real life, it carries a gravitas wholly its own. Implicit in every photo is the physical world surrounding the shot and a narrative—all the events that lead up to and follow from its shooting of the present—in which it’s embedded.
At its best, photography reveals to us the beauty that our world-weary eyes all too often miss.
At its worst, photography immortalizes good, bad, and ugly—yet visceral—images of life lived.
Either way, the photographer teaches us to see again.
As smartphones have become ubiquitous and their cameras turned professional-grade, the world has been invited to perform the magic of revealing this beauty. Photography is perhaps the most democratic creative medium in this day and age.
Because of this, NFPs will bring unprecedented levels of creation to the NFT space and empower creators all over the world to capture value from their work like never before.
The real ownership conferred by NFTs gives rise to its inherent economic value—something can only be bought and sold if it can be owned. As we increasingly inhabit the digital world over the coming months, years, decades, we will desire our own, owned assets there. NFPs will clutter the digital bookshelves, cover the metaverse desks, and line the web3 walls that make up our digital world.
Quantum Art is lighting the torch of this revolution by providing creators and collectors alike with a commons in which to congregate and share the world’s most vivid collections as NFPs.
If 2021 was any indication of the power of NFTs to change the way we engage with art, 2022 will mark a quantum leap (pun very much intended) forward in the history of photography.
It is said that entertainers reassert truths while artists reveal them. In this brave new web3 world, creatives are on the rise as entertainers spiral in decline.
I, for one, am all for it.
Tom is a New York-based writer. You can read more of his work here. A special thanks to Kevin Esherick for reviewing and editing this piece.