This unique medium of truth-telling and visual expression is more relevant than ever, as the world’s best photographers continue to burnish their images into our culture and onto our consciousness.
Yet as has happened before, technological change is triggering profound upheaval for the medium and the industry. In the nearly two centuries since its invention, we can point to certain moments when breakthrough innovations changed the course of photography’s history: the Daguerreotypes of the 1840s. Anna Atkins setting photographs in a book for the first time in 1883, the advent of the motion picture and the arrival of Kodachrome film, the iPhone and Instagram.
We believe that we are approaching another watershed for photography. For the past two decades, even as digital technology has opened the medium to billions, as both producers and consumers, it has steadily been undermining the ethics and economics of the professional craft. The big tech companies have brought amazing innovation, but are sapping much of the value of the work from the authors who make the images that matter. In short, for too long now, the amateurs have been driving the destiny of the medium.
We believe that the blockchain can change the paradigm for the professional industry. This transparent and secure digital ledger provides a viable way to trace images across the internet, and reestablish scarcity on the marketplace. Yes, change is coming, and along with the world’s best photographers and those who believe in the power of visual storytelling, we hope you will join us around these 8 basic principles:
