NFT Workshop

Photography on the Blockchain: An Introduction

Saturday, July 30 | 11AM–3PM

Online via Zoom

Since August of 2021, the market for NFT photography has grown by leaps and bounds, and has presented new opportunities for artists and collectors alike to participate in new marketplaces and communities centered around photography on the blockchain. This workshop is for photographers, collectors, curators, and critics interested in learning about the intersections of photography and NFTs. Over four hours, we will introduce the various ways in which blockchain technologies have facilitated new paradigms for photography as both creative practice and collectable asset.

Photographic artist, writer, publisher, organizer and educator Gregory Eddi Jones leads the workshop, joined by a panel of photography professionals who are involved with the NFT market from various standpoints, each offering their unique experiences and perspectives. Panelists include writer, curator, and co-founder of Assembly Ashlyn Davis Burns; multi-disciplinary artist Karen Navarro; and AI & Robotics technologist, artist, scientist and author Rashed Haq.

This workshop will cover:

  • Introductions to the communities and infrastructure that have developed to support artists in this new ecosystem.
  • Overview of how artists are supplementing their traditional careers by opening avenues into the NFT market.
  • Discussion of the histories, economics, and theories of NFT photography.
  • A Who’s Who of the most prominent photographers who have emerged within NFT photography communities
  • A review of “blockchain native” photographic practices, and prompts for considering new theories of photography NFTs as a creative practice and collectable asset. 

General Admission: $85
Meeting Place registrants: $60

About the Panelists:

ASHLYN DAVIS BURNS
www.assembly.art

Ashlyn Davis Burns is a writer and independent curator based in Houston, Texas and the co-founder of Assembly, a gallery, agency, creative studio, and art advisory that holistically nurtures artists and their practice, while identifying and cultivating opportunities for collaborations with a global network of creatives in both the fine art and commercial worlds. Burns has worked to support lens-based artists for the past decade through curatorial, editorial, and fundraising initiatives, including most recently as the Executive Director & Curator of Houston Center for Photography (2015-2020). She has written for numerous publications, consulted with artists and publishers on photobooks, and curated exhibitions internationally for a variety of institutions including libraries, universities, and galleries.

Assembly supports an innovative roster of visual artists who are engaging in some of the most important social and cultural issues of our time. Assembly Curated was launched in 2022 to be a lighthouse in the NFT space, guiding artists, the institutions that support them, and collectors toward the most culturally-valuable work on the market, presented in curated collections that preserve the artistic process, context, and long-term value of the work on the blockchain.

 

KAREN NAVARRO
www.karennavarroph.com 

Karen Navarro is an Argentine-born multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Houston. Navarro works on a diverse array of mediums that include photography, collage, and sculpture. Her image-based work and multimedia practice investigate the intersections of identity, self-representation, race, gender, belonging, and her own Indigenous identity. Her constructed portraits are known for pushing the boundaries of traditional photography and the use of color. Navarro has won numerous awards and grants and has been widely exhibited around the world.

 

RASHED HAQ
www.rashedhaq.com

Rashed Haq is a Bangladeshi-American artist, scientist and technologist. He learned photography in the darkroom in Rochester, NY and was trained as a mathematical physicist, going on to do research in quantum cloaking, quantum computing and the physics of black holes. He then worked in Silicon Valley developing innovative applications of artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced analytics. He was nominated for the AI Innovator of the Year Award by AI Business in 2019, and published his book “Enterprise AI Transformation” with Wiley Press in 2020.

Rashed uses a combination of photography and software algorithms in his artistic practice, many of the techniques having been used in software engineering. He has recently had over 40 solo and group exhibitions across North America, and his work is in various private and corporate collections. He won the Art+Science award from Lenscratch, COMPAS photography award from Oxford University, and received honorable mention for the Carol Crow Fellowship at the Houston Center for Photography. A selection of his photographs were published by the “Center for American Architecture and Design”.

 

GREGORY EDDI JONES
www.gregoryeddijones.com

Gregory Eddi Jones is a photographic artist, writer, publisher, and educator based between Philadelphia and New York. Jones' photographic work interrogates politics of common cultural images through strategies of appropriation and re-authorship. Much of his practice is defined by visual criticism, dark humor, cultural commentary, and the updating of photographic traditions for the current day.

He has exhibited his work internationally and throughout the United States, and his self-published books are held in numerous institutional photobook collections, including libraries at Museum of Modern Art, The Met, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Yale University, among many others. Jones was named a Foam Talent in 2018, was a Paul Huf Award nominee in 2021. Jones’s work has been published in numerous international publications, including The Guardian, VICE, British Journal of Photography, Foam Magazine, Wallpaper, Blind, Humble Arts Foundation, Creators Project, Fisheye, Revista Balam, and IMA Magazine, among others.