The NFT space evolves so rapidly that it’s said one month feels like a year. Another popular saying is that collectors and artists are “building the plane while flying,” making decisions on the go that could influence the market for years to come. And given that breakneck pace, mistakes do happen. 

Artists have been scammed by people claiming to be collectors interested in purchasing work, having money and assets stolen from their wallets. Some have priced their work too high and struggled to find buyers. Others priced photos too low and came to regret it. 

“People see NFTs selling, and they think it’s easy,” the photographer Paola Franqui, who also goes by the moniker Monaris, admits. “No, it’s a lot of work.” In Web 2.0, she was already established. She has more than 350K followers on Instagram, with a client list that includes Mercedes Benz, Nike, and American Airlines. Her debut book was published by Setanta Books. 

“I had to start over in Web3,” she says. “Most collectors had no idea about my work. But now I’m 100% invested in this space. It has changed my life.” We asked five prominent photographers in the community to tell us about some of the common mistakes they see photographers making when minting their first NFTs–and how they can be avoided. 

Mistake #1: Not being active on Twitter. 

The NFT community lives and breathes on Twitter. “It’s all extremely fast-paced and ever-evolving, so you first must be willing to listen and absorb,” the photographer ??Gabriella Morton explains. “Ads and influencer marketing stick out as inauthentic, so you really need an organic, consistent presence to be recognizable and identifiable.” Collectors will often look at an artist’s Twitter feed not only to gauge their work but also to learn their backstories—and see whether or not they’re sharing work by other artists and uplifting their peers. 

To learn more about the role of Twitter in the space, check out our article on the subject. 

Mistake #2: Jumping in without getting to know the community. 

Beyond Twitter, consider attending events, virtual and in-person, or linking up with people in your city. Sit back and listen to what people in the community have to say before jumping in yourself. “I learned, built products, wrote articles, hosted talks, and so on for ten months before I dropped my collection, DRIVE,” the photographer Dave Krugman says. “If you add value before you ask for value, you’ll never have to ask. 

“Learn, participate, and contribute. We are in interconnected digital ecosystems; focus on the health of the whole forest, not just your tree. We all need each other. Help us build; help others, and you will ride the wave with all of us. By the time I dropped DRIVE, everyone was eager to own a piece from me because I had already proven I was here for the long run.”

Mistake #3: Minting everything. 

“Photographers need to approach the NFT space with intention and curate the work they intend to mint on the blockchain more aggressively than they normally would,” the artist Aaron Ricketts tells us. “One reason is because almost every interaction on the blockchain has an associated gas fee, which could get expensive very quickly if you are constantly minting or burning work.” Start with just a few pieces, and if they sell, try more. 

Mistake #4: Undervaluing your work. 

The NFT space–and its price points–can be wildly different from the traditional art world, so it’s good practice to research the market and the players in the community to get a feel for demand and pricing. The more scarce or rare your work is, in general, the higher you can price it. A 1:1 photo will be worth more, for example, than a larger edition. 

“Looking back on my first collection, Collecting Hands, I sold those photos for 0.3 ETH,” Monaris remembers. “Now, that hurts me. That’s painful.” For context, the current floor price for the collection is 2.75 ETH. The total trading volume? 39.9 ETH. “At the same time, maybe everything happened the way that it had to happen,” the artist says. “That collection helped me spread the word of who I was–and who I am in Web3.” Given the demand, her subsequent collections have started off at higher price points. 

Mistake #5: Starting with unrealistic prices. 

On the other side of the coin, it’s usually better to start low and then increase your prices over time. “When you begin, maybe save your absolute best work for later, but put things out you are very proud of at reasonable prices,” Krugman suggests. “The goal is to start building your collector base–your group of invested advocates. From there, you can scale up, iterate, and learn. The key to this space is participation, so it’s best to get started and learn as you go.” 

Mistake #6: Expecting immediate results. 

“The biggest mistake I see in the space is rushing in and burning out, or giving up because you don’t make a sale right away,” Krugman adds. “I’ve had SuperRare pieces sit for months with no interest, before selling for 8.5+ ETH later.” In other words, think long-term. Continue engaging with the community, sharing your work, and supporting other artists. Success comes with time and patience. 

Mistake #7: Letting the market control your vision.

While it’s important to understand what’s trending in the space, that doesn’t mean you have to change your work to fit what you think other people want to see. Many of the most successful artists in the space have spent years–a decade, in some cases–creating and innovating before finding a home for their work on the blockchain. 

It might be tempting to change your style to match other successful artists, and it might lead to a quick sale, but it won’t do anything to foster those long-term relationships that drive this space. On the other hand, doing something original can pay off. 

“Some artists have come in taking risks and had great success trying something different,” Jessica Cardelucci tells us. “For example, when I minted my Wild Mustangs collection last summer, there were hardly any still B&W collections on the blockchain and also very few images of wildlife. It took a while to get some traction, but I’ve since had a 7 ETH secondary sale, which was extremely humbling for my photography.” 

Mistake #8: Not being safe. 

The crypto art space is, unfortunately, riddled with scams and hackers. Basic safety measures include using two-factor authentication (2FA) on all your accounts, setting up a cold storage hardware wallet (like a Ledger), never clicking on links from people you don’t know, and never, ever sharing your private key or your recovery/seed phrase. 

“Get a physical hardware crypto wallet if you can afford one before getting started,” Cardelucci advises. “There are sadly lots of opportunities for user errors in this industry, so I highly recommend researching how to keep your assets safe. Learning more about crypto security is also key. I know it’s a lot to absorb, but it will be helpful in the long run if you want to stay in this space.

Mistake #9: Ignoring your carbon footprint. 

“Although most don’t consider the energy consumption of traditional banking, social media, and the making/shipping/packing of physical art, we do need to acknowledge that NFTs have a footprint,” Morton admits. “When you calculate the dollar average, it’s by far more sustainable to sell high-value 1/1 NFTs than lower-value, quantifiable editions.” The energy-intensive protocol that currently powers the Ethereum blockchain, where most NFTs live, could change soon, but in the meantime, it’s worth doing everything you can to understand, quantify, and reduce your emissions. 

Mistake #10: Seeing the “sale” as the end goal.  

“The biggest mistake you can make is dropping a project and then walking away,” Krugman tells us. “A project launch is the start of a journey–the sale is the entrance, not the exit. If you are lucky enough to sell out a project, make sure you have a plan to keep that community engaged, and even before that, make sure that’s something you really want to do. Working in NFTs as an artist is more than a full-time job; it’s an all-consuming lifestyle with the goal of becoming a sovereign individual. To me, the effort is worth it–to own my time, have control of my art, and have the resources to make my wildest ideas a reality.”

The post 10 Mistakes Photographers Make When Listing Their First NFT appeared first on Feature Shoot.

When Susan Borowitz was growing up, she saw a commercial for Wind Song perfume: “a beautiful woman’s face seen through a misty window of a steam train, her handsome suitor looking on from the platform longingly, while a tenor sang, ‘I can’t seem to forget you; your Wind Song stays on my mind…’” Looking back, she describes herself as a “love-sick adolescent.” At the time, she wanted to be the woman in the ad. 

As girls and young women, we’re surrounded by these kinds of images–pictures that show us what life “should” be like when we’re grown up and have everything all figured out. In Locked-In, Borowitz presents an alternative, posing in self-portraits that express the real-life frustrations of being human–and more specifically, of being a woman in a society shaped, in part, by patriarchal structures. 

Those frustrations come to life through physical performances: the artist vacuums on a beach, plants a garden in the desert, sits in a car going nowhere, and finds herself in a pool without water. She’s Sisyphus rolling the boulder or Tantalus reaching for fruit. In one photograph, she riffs on Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait; while Rockwell’s bespectacled eyes are wide open in his version, Borowitz is blindfolded in hers. 

Locked-In started partly as a way of visualizing the pressures of aging in a world that idolizes youth, but Borowitz has since found that it resonates with younger women too. In hindsight, she believes that she might have been subconsciously drawing from her experiences with clinical depression in her thirties and forties. 

While the photographs themselves represent the feeling of being trapped, they were, in fact, made all over the globe. When Borowitz got to the other side of that depression, she traveled–a lot. In real life, she’s not stuck. During the making of the project, her friends and contacts tipped her off to locations that might be of interest; some are photographers who run workshops on abandoned places. Sometimes, the place itself inspires the story she tells, and other times, it’s just the opposite.

The first photo was Stalled: after finding a car graveyard in a village in Kazakhstan during a photo workshop, Borowitz hopped inside. She made Stilted after discovering, by chance, a house being renovated; “it had pilings bolstering the upper floor as the bottom floor was gutted and razed,” she remembers. “I had been wanting to make an image of a woman returning ‘home’ with luggage only to find an empty lot, but I realized this was far better.”

No Vacancy brought her to another kind of location entirely: the remains of Belchite, an old town destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. In all, the photographs feature locations spread out across Kazakhstan; Spain; Romania; Mongolia; India; Thailand; Vietnam, and several states in the US, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Chicago.

Borowitz’s work combines the deadpan humor of Buster Keaton with the cultural critique of Cindy Sherman in the Untitled Film Stills era, with the latter having embodied various feminine archetypes inspired by movies from the 1950s and ’60s. While Borowitz admits that her persona in Locked-In represents a kind of “everywoman,” one key difference between Locked-In and Sherman’s Film Stills is that Borowitz is still, essentially, herself. She’s playing a role, but she’s also being honest about herself. 

Locked-In is funny because it’s also painful. The creation of the photographs was joyful, but it was also arduous. While some of the more impossible scenarios were brought to life in post-production, she actually did bring a bike into the ocean. Her friend stood on shore, ready to push the shutter button, when the artist was swept up by a wave. She lost her footing and was left clinging frantically to her bike, fighting an undertow that threatened to pull her out to sea. Her friend still laughs every time she sees the picture. 

When working in an abandoned trolley car, Borowitz cut her leg on a broken nail; in other cases, she braved freezing temperatures or stood on an abandoned staircase that could have crumbled at any moment. To create Bottomless Cup, she had to walk a mile by foot, toting all her heavy gear in a wagon across the forest terrain. Many of the shoots were group efforts, made with friends, so while they might have brought challenges, she looks back on them very fondly. 

The picture she made in the trolly graveyard was one of just a few that didn’t spring spontaneously from the artist’s imagination. That one, as it happens, was inspired by that Wind Song perfume ad that captivated her decades ago. “I finally got to be that woman,” she tells me. “But the train is abandoned, overgrown with vines and gnarly bushes.” 

In Locked-In, the central character is foiled at every turn. I understand why so many people relate to her, but more than that, I admire her. Even when nothing goes her way, she keeps trying, in the steadfast hope–and belief–that someday, somehow, she’ll get to wherever it is she’s going. The odds are stacked against her, but she’s relentless in the pursuit of her goals. Sure, she’s not the idealized feminine archetype of perfume ads, but maybe she’s even better. She’s still, in some essential sense, aspirational–someone we can all strive to be. 

All images © Susan Borowitz

The post Finding Humor In Life’s (Many) Challenges appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Outside, it was so cold he couldn’t feel his hands. Inside, he didn’t have heat or hot water. Every night Adrian Francis stayed at the monastery in Southwestern North Macedonia, he slept under three blankets, layering himself in every sweater and hoodie he’d carried with him for the journey. 

The photographer, who’d been invited to the Bigorski Monastery, slept inside the guest’s quarters, but he spent most of his days at the workshop, as it was the warmest place to be. There, he was in the company of the monks, who were busy at work, woodworking and painting–making relics and adornments for the church. He joined them for sweets, tea, and hot cocoa, and they filled in the quiet moments talking about their homes and families. 

Francis first happened upon the Bigorski Monastery while conducting research online. At the time, he was a photography student in Denmark, and, having been raised in a Catholic household, he had a lifelong interest in religion. His interest turned to Macedonia, specifically, when he remembered his upbringing in Syracuse, New York, home to a local Macedonian community and Orthodox church. 

The Bigorski Monastery is unique, in part, because of its rehabilitation program. The monastery is home not only to the monks but also to a group of men, ages eighteen to fifty, in recovery from addiction. Francis reached out about the possibility of visiting and photographing their work via email. Two weeks later, he heard back from Father Anatolij, who informed him that the Abbot, Father Partenij,* had agreed. He booked a flight to Skopje, North Macedonia, immediately. 

The monastery includes the guest building where Francis stayed; the monks’ quarters; the dormitories for those in rehabilitation; the church; a courtyard; the workshop; a library, kitchen, and tea room; and several common rooms and dining rooms. Finally, there are the dogs. The monks breed the native Karaman shepherd dogs, who live on the side of the mountain. It’s from them that Francis borrows the title of his series: Karaman Mountain. 

Each day started promptly at 5:30 AM with prayer, attended by the monks, and often, those in recovery as well. Watching the monks enter the church–one by one, as they kissed each icon along the way, their habits flowing in their wake–reminded Francis of watching the ballet. 

From there, he headed into the tea room before sitting down to the first meal of the day: bread and soup. All meals served at the monastery are vegan. The photographer learned quickly to show up to meals on time; if he was off making pictures and missed a meal, it would be another eight to twelve hours until the next one. Over the course of his visit, he lost fifteen pounds. 

While he was allowed to photograph much of the monastery, access to the rehabilitation program was restricted to protect the residents and their privacy. Still, Francis witnessed the close friendships that formed between the monks and those in recovery, finding them united by a common goal and a shared sense of discipline. 

Meanwhile, withdrawals were managed with the help of a doctor, who administered medications as needed; once they were over, the men would stay busy by carrying out tasks around the monastery, based on their needs and abilities. “Some of them would clean,” Francis says. “Some would cook; some would take care of the orchard, which was the sole source of food for the monastery.” At night, they slept in bunks in the dorms. “They took care of each other,” the photographer remembers. “If one was new, the others would look after them.”

This idea of community runs throughout life at the monastery, where everyone contributes and shares with each other. During his visit, Francis says he was treated like family. “It’s about simply living day by day, knowing you have a meal, a place to sleep, and people who truly care about you,” he admits. “That, to me, is brotherhood.”

While he didn’t speak much with the men in the rehabilitation program, the photographer did spend time with one of them. He didn’t speak English, so they chatted using gestures and signs. They bonded that way. 

The monks hailed from small towns across North Macedonia. So did the men in the rehabilitation program. Many of the younger monks had grown up with someone in the program. The photographer grew closest to Father Anatolij, who largely served as his host and guide. They still speak every few months. 

Father Efrem, Francis learned, comes from a Muslim family and converted to Christianity. His family is supportive. “I watched him herd sheep, feed them, carry rocks for the new church, start a fire, and then make us tea while we sat outside and chatted,” the photographer remembers. They laughed at memes on Father Efrem’s flip phone. 

Then, of course, there were the dogs, who lived according to their own rules. Some could be approached, while others could not. On his first night, one bit the photographer when he approached. It was so cold that he didn’t feel it as it happened, and he was able to wash his wounds with the bitterly cold water back in his room. He worried he might get rabies. Still, Francis was enchanted by the animals. “The dog’s temperaments represented everything this place did–harsh and cold on the outside but kind and warm when they eventually let you in,” he says now. 

While the photographer longed to make more pictures featuring the monks prominently, he found that they often preferred privacy. “They don’t like attention because their purpose is to fully serve God and be a representative of God,” he explains. “That’s it, nothing else.” He always asked permission before raising the camera: “I was told no at times, and was completely fine with that.”

When Francis arrived at the monastery, he hoped to find moments of divinity that can define religious spaces. And he did: rays of light, parting clouds, and hands used for prayer are recurring motifs throughout the work. But he was also surprised by the humanity of this place, where everyone’s battling something, whether it’s addiction, in the case of those in recovery, or the pull of feelings such as lust or envy, in the case of the monks. In some ways, these mortal moments–the ones that highlighted the experiences we all share–felt the most sacred. 

On his second to last day at the monastery, Father Anatolij permitted Francis to enter the tomb that now houses the skulls of the monks who once lived there. “He went in first, without me, to pray,” the photographer remembers. “Then, I was able to go in. I was shocked he allowed me to photograph it. I still look at it like he was giving me this special gift. I thought about what type of men they had all been. I couldn’t help but think too that his skull would be there someday, along with the other incredible monks of the monastery I had the pleasure of meeting.” 

*Father Partenij is now a Bishop. 

All images © Adrian Francis

The post In the Mountains of Southwestern Macedonia, Monks and Recovering Addicts Live in Harmony appeared first on Feature Shoot.

The photographer Leonardo Carrato has known Aladino Mimico for more than seven years now. Mimico is a Shaman living in Pebas, a village in the Amazon rainforest, and when Carrato visits, usually for one-month stays, he becomes a member of his family. He goes with him to search for food and medicine in the forest, and he returns with him for healing sessions during the day. At night, he listens to myths–stories long passed down from one generation to the next. 

The years-long friendship began when the photographer set out to understand the brutal history of colonialism, globalization, and their effects on Indigenous communities in the Amazon. At the same time, he also wanted to learn about what these communities could teach us about sustainability in the age of climate change and widespread deforestation. For that, Carrato knew he had to start with a Shaman, a leader equipped with the knowledge to show him the way. 

Traveling throughout Amazon isn’t a simple feat, but Carrato had a way in: the Italian photographer Ernesto Bazan invited him to a workshop in Iquitos, Peru. From there, he crossed the Amazon, and two months later, found himself in Belém do Pará, Brazil. On the way, it was in Pebas, along the Ampiyacu River, that he met Mimico, a member of the Bora Indigenous community, who have called the Amazon their ancestral home for generations. 

“Aladino’s story begins in Brazil, on the border with Peru, where his grandfather and father were enslaved in the rubber industry in the early 1900s,” the photographer explains. “On the run from a cruel reality, they found asylum together with their own people in Pebas. As his father and grandfather were also Shamans, they were finally able to pass on all their vast knowledge to Aladino.”

The definition of “shaman” changes based on where you are and who you ask, but in the Amazon, Carrato says the term encompasses many different roles, including the role of a scientist, doctor, and historian. “The Shaman is the person who is responsible for connecting the material and the immaterial or subjective world,” he says. “In Indigenous cosmology and from an Amerindian perspective, the forest is a great chaotic center populated by a diversity of beings, and the shaman, using a western term, needs to act as a diplomat to establish a certain natural order among those who are there.”

(For a more thorough understanding of the importance of a shaman in these communities, he recommends reading the work of the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro; Davi Kopenawa, the shamanic leader of the Yanomami; and the Brazilian philosopher Déborah Danowski.)

As Carrato stresses, Mimico is a shaman “24 hours a day, even when dreaming.” He’s also a husband to his wife, Juana Mimico, and the father of eleven children. A guardian of the knowledge passed down to him by his father and his father’s father, he’s also seeing the world change rapidly around him. Younger generations are leaving for bigger cities, and few are interested in becoming shamans and inheriting the wisdom that comes with it. 

Meanwhile, Indigenous communities face prejudice, and their land continues to be exploited. “The Amazon is facing an extremely delicate moment, with the impact touching the entire planet,” Carrato says. The Amazon is a carbon sink, absorbing massive emissions and helping to offset climate change. Just this year, however, January saw a record-breaking destruction of trees. President Jair Bolsonaro has lifted legal protections for the area. More than 10,000 species of plants and animals face serious risk of extinction. 

Combined, these pressures have taken a toll on the Shaman and left scars both literal and psychological. He’s torn between his duties as a shaman and the knowledge that his people’s traditions and way of life are under threat. “The Bora live today in a region where, in addition to the aforementioned activities, they also face drug trafficking, the struggle for land against large landowners, and the exodus of the population to large centers in search of work,” Carrato explains. 

The coca plant has been used in religious rituals, rites, and traditions across generations, and it plays an important role in the work of a shaman. At the same time, modern pressures have resulted in the exploitation of the plant, which is also used in the production of cocaine. Given decreasing resources and opportunities, some have been forced to turn to coca for survival, with fewer and fewer people understanding its history. 

As a shaman, Mimico has had to consume large doses of coca as part of healing practices, spiritual duties, and everyday tasks. But when that consumption was combined with the pressures of a changing cultural landscape and dwindling natural resources, he suffered an internal hemorrhage and had to be hospitalized. He almost died. His recovery is ongoing. 

Others in the community face health challenges, physical and mental, and a lack of resources to help. During one of Carrato’s visits, a man died by suicide. An announcement of the death was made over a loudspeaker. A very young child died of an infection. 

Carrato believes that Mimico agreed to their collaboration for a simple reason: to tell his story. In the face of a crisis in his community, this is one way he can show the world what’s happening. “Indigenous culture is transmitted mainly orality, and as many of the younger members of the community seek other ways of living, much can be lost, including the sacred stories that were passed from generation to generation through conversations,” the photograph says. “With this, Aladino also understands the importance and power of transmitting knowledge through photography.” 

In recent years, Carrato has spent a lot of his time at the sacred mount, where the Bora Shaman does spiritual work, finds essential plants, observes the wildlife, and takes time for reflection. It took the photographer three years to be allowed in this place. “Accessing it requires knowledge of Indigenous culture, clarity of thought, and a greater understanding of shamanism and the Amerindian perspective,” he says. “The walk is exhausting, but physical and mental exhaustion is necessary.”

He’ll never forget the moment he first reached the mount. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to put into words the feelings I experienced, but it’s something that goes beyond what is usually understood,” he admits. “There seems to be a clarity and everything seems to make sense. It is a feeling of integration, of belonging.”

It’ll take collective action and long-term resistance to stop the devastation in the Amazon. In the meantime, Mimico, and the community are doing the best they can to survive. The Shaman and the photographer speak on the phone often. Carrato is listening, and he hopes the world will too. “The moment is urgent,” he says. “We don’t have much time.”

All images © Leonardo Carrato. En Bora by Leonardo Carrato is an ongoing and evolving project. You can follow the photographer on Instagram at @leonardocarrato for updates. Carrato was selected as the 3rd Place Winner of the Climate Change Award at last year’s BarTur Photo Award. This year’s awards are currently open, with free entries accepted through June 30th. 

The post His Father and Grandfather Taught Him How To Be a Shaman. Now He’s One of the Only Ones Left.  appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Last year, the photographer TJ Thorne sold out the entirety of his Ebb and Flow collection, a series of 100 1:1 NFTs, during a Twitter Space hosted by his friend, NFT tastemaker DeeZe. “He gave me an audience and a stage to tell my story and what the images mean to me,” the artist remembers. “What happened after that was just magic in my eyes.” 

It’s a story you might know already. But here’s what you might not know: Thorne initially minted his first NFTs on OpenSea in March, the same month NFTs launched head-first into the mainstream consciousness with the $69 million Beeple sale at Christie’s. Very few photography projects had entered the space yet. “I had no idea that there was an NFT community, and I had no idea that most everything took place on Twitter, which I didn’t use,” the artist admits now. “Since I had no idea how to sell those first NFTs, I ended up deleting them.”

Two months later, a friend reached out to Thorne with news: NFT collectors were starting to invest in photography. “He told me that everything took place on Twitter, so I dusted off my Twitter account that I had never used, and I jumped back in,” Thorne remembers now. The rest is history. 

There are a few reasons why Twitter has proven so influential in the NFT Space. To understand them, it’s best to start at the beginning–and, arguably, with profile pics, or PFPs. Some of the earliest NFT projects gained momentum as PFPs, including the now-famous CryptoPunks by Larva Labs, launched in 2017. In April of 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club launched. In September of 2021, Christie’s Hong Kong announced an auction devoted to PFP NFTs. 

These projects have thousands of images, each with unique traits; some are rarer, and therefore more valuable, drawing comparisons to the Pokémon cards of yesteryear. Of course, they’ve also become status symbols. 

Last April, you could get a Bored Ape NFT for $200. One year later, you’d have to shell out $420,000 to join the exclusive club, famed for its celebrity collectors, including Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, and Madonna. Fans dream of being able to snag a rare Ape, such as one with laser eyes or solid gold fur, making the collection feel especially aspirational. 

But it’s not only about showing off your expensive wares. Beyond the artwork itself and the communities build around it, part of the appeal of these projects is that collectors can show off their NFTs in the form of social media avatars, including their Twitter profile pictures. 

For many, then, NFTs have become a means of expressing personal identities–and of connecting with people following a global pandemic that left many of us isolated. On Twitter, where it’s easy to get lost in information overload, today’s artists and collectors signal to each other using profile pictures on Twitter, while at the same time declaring their membership as part of a larger group. Holders of some of these collections, like Bored Apes, get together and make connections, in-person and in the metaverse.  For many, it’s about the social aspect more than the artwork itself. 

On Twitter, live audio conversations are also a major component. Twitter Spaces have been around since 2020, but in October 2021, it reached the masses, with any Twitter user able to create and host their own conversations. The NFT community had already been active on Clubhouse, so audio chats were second-nature. With Spaces, Twitter helped bridge the gap between the crypto community and the art world, albeit with a more casual vibe. 

The NFT space moves at breakneck speed, but Twitter Spaces foster in-depth conversations with artists and collectors. Some spaces give artists room to “shill” their work, while others mark the launch of new projects, reveal parties, or surprise drops. At the same time, others delve into complex topics like how smart contracts work, why some projects sell out and others remain underrecognized, and what gallery spaces might look like in the metaverse.

In time, photographers migrated over to Twitter, bringing a new perspective to conversations already swirling around the NFT space. NFT collectors could find new artists on Twitter, and photographers could communicate with them one-on-one, without the need for the kinds of “gatekeepers” we see in the traditional art world. 

Even for artists new to Twitter, the platform felt more accessible than other social channels. “When I hopped over to Twitter Spaces, almost overnight, I got to actually meet and personally talk with people I’ve followed for ages,” Chris Hytha, the photographer behind the Rowhomes NFT collection, tells us. “I feel that for a lot of photographers, Instagram has become very business-like. You have to plan your grid, and you can’t post anything that’s not in your ‘style.’ You set up all these rules for yourself. But in the last year, Twitter became a place where we could be free and just speak our minds.” 

Perhaps most of all, Twitter has become a place where artists can support other artists and lift each other up. Dave Krugman, the creator of DRIVE, regularly hosts “races” on Twitter, where his followers can compete by shooting photos in the style of the collection or creating derivative artworks. In that sense, the collectors are able to become artists themselves, expanding on the original work. Krugman’s races aren’t limited to NFT holders, either; anyone can participate. 

In many ways, this ethos of sharing is baked into the platform itself. “Twitter has the best feature that Instagram does not, the ‘re-tweet’ button, which many value as the secret weapon to sharing other artists’ art,” Jessica Cardelucci, the photographer behind the Wild Mustangs NFT collection, tells us. “Twitter allows us to not only share our own work, but become curators ourselves by easily re-sharing other artist’s work we find and love.” 

While Twitter can help foster these long-term connections and support systems, it also has its drawbacks. As the photographer and collector Natalie Christensen explained in a recent Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Feature Shoot, Twitter can also be fertile ground for comparisons with other artists, including those who might appear to be selling more or attaining more success in the space. 

It can feel overwhelming and all-consuming; some describe it as full-time job. “When I started with NFTs last year, I spent almost every waking hour on Twitter, for fear of missing something important or fear of being memory holed,” photographer Hans Kemp, who created the Bikes of Burden collection, admits. “I can’t do that anymore, and that’s okay. Everyone has a different philosophy of life of course, but I didn’t escape the rat race by devoting my life to my photography passion to now end up being trapped in the FUD and FOMO of the NFT space. I want to enjoy life and continue documenting it with a sense of wonder. And I want to transfer this sense to people out there, and NFTs are allowing me to continue to do this.” 

(NFT Twitter also has its own language. FUD stands for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” and FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.”)

At its worst, Twitter breeds FUD and FOMO, but at it’s best, it’s a place where artists can be themselves and find people who relate to their work, even if they’re halfway across the world. “I’m not sure what makes the Ebb and Flow collection so well-suited for NFTs, but I’m glad that people connected with my story,” TJ Thorne tells me.

 “My advice is simple: be genuine. Be a good person. Support others, and try to add value not just to the NFT space but to the world in general. It’s easy to get deep into this stuff and to run your mental health ragged. So you need to take care of yourself and not let your emotions be controlled by all of the ups and downs. I think remaining true to your creative spirit and never forgetting why you started to point a camera at things are important.” 

The post Understanding the Role of Twitter in the NFT Space appeared first on Feature Shoot.

What strikes me most about Discord is the intimacy of the conversations.  In the Quantum server, for instance, Elinor Carucci tells the stories behind her tender portraits of her brother, grandfather, mother, and aunt. In NFTPhotographers.xyz, one photographer opens up about how the natural world helped him survive a period of severe depression, while another reflects on finding strength in community amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in Obscura, a group of photographers who are also moms set out to define the “Mother Gaze,” while speaking one-to-one about both the victories and heartbreaks that come with raising kids and documenting life at home. For a long time, photographers have lived on platforms like Instagram, where we’re only exposed to the work and stories of people we already follow. But Discord is changing the game and opening the floor to discussions that are both personal and global. 

Originally made popular by gamers, Discord combines text, voice, video, and chat, fostering candid, real-time discussions–and an accessible point of entry for photographers dipping their toes into Web3. For the NFT photography community, it’s a place to ask questions, follow trending projects, and “shill” your work (when asked). We rounded up this quick guide to some art and photography-centric Discords to keep on your radar. 

This Island

This Island is Feature Shoot’s brand-new Discord. It’s a place for us to share our most recent articles and opportunities for photographers happening around the world, including grants and awards. Members can show off their NFTs, ask questions, share links, and find collaborators for future projects. From now on, we are also accepting submissions through Discord–for free! 

NFTPhotographers.xyz

Johan Lolos created NFTPhotographers.xyz to connect photographers and collectors from the NFT space. With more than 3,700 members to date, their server offers tips on entering the community and releasing or investing in a collection, allowing members to ask questions and share lessons they learned along the way. 

They also have channels for women photographers in the NFT space and discussions on the business of photography on Web3, from marketing your work to navigating smart contracts. Meanwhile, their AMA (Ask Me Anything) Stage opens up the floor to the community to chat with their curated photographers in real-time. Newcomers to the space can find a wealth of information via their NFT guides channel, where they share best practices, common mistakes to avoid, and more. 

Quantum.Art

Quantum Art is a platform for photographers on the blockchain. With nearly 14,000 members to date, their Discord plays host to “Show and Tell” events with photographers, industry news, general Quantum announcements, open studio-style channels with artists on their roster, and more. 

Browse to learn about Acacia Johnson’s memories of growing up in the mythological landscape of Alaska, Joni Sternbach’s chance encounter on a beach in Montauk, or Justin Aversano’s favorite photograph of all time (hint: it’s a W. Eugene Smith).

Assembly

Assembly Curated is a gallery, agency, and creative studio specializing in fine art photography NFTs. More than 8,000 members strong, their Discord server has channels for photo book recommendations, virtual art exhibitions, open studios with the artists they represent, and tech talk. Tune into Cristina de Middel’s channel to learn about the time spent with a young man growing coca in Bolivia, or visit Simon Roberts’ channel to learn about the journey he took to document life Murmansk, where average winter temperatures hover at -30 degrees. 

Desire Path

Desire Path DAO is a community of photographers navigating the Web3 space together. Their Discord covers photo news, photo books, web3 help, and more. It’s an accessible space where you can ask questions about crypto, smart contracts, AI tools; share your opinions, and connect with about a dozen photographers via open studio-style channels. 

RAW DAO

The RAW DAO is a photography-focused decentralized autonomous organization, incubated by the team at the prominent FingerprintsDAO. “The Raw DAO is an initiative that was formed when one of my images sold for 871 ETH to raise funding for a treasury to support hundreds to thousands of photographers’ works in the NFT space,” the photographer Justin Aversano tells us. Their Discord channels include general announcements (auctions, airdrops, acquisitions, photo walks, and upcoming events), technical discussions, and a place to share your work. 

Fellowship

Fellowship Trust is building an NFT photography collection spanning the 19th century through today. With more than 6,500 members, their Discord is host to a general chat, artist channels, a place to share your work, and lots more. The space is also home to discussions about conceptual photography; self-portraiture; new artists in the space; and the evolving art market, including the stories behind some of the most expensive photographs of all time. In the Early Photography channel, the art historian Kim Beil takes a deep dive into photo history, from 1839 to today. 

Obscura

Obscura is a DAO created to help photographers realize their dream projects. Photographers can submit their projects, and commissions are awarded monthly, with the curatorial team selecting photographers on a rolling basis. Their Discord hosts open calls, community projects, updates on current and future commissions, and more. 

They also open the floor to candid discussions of topics that are too often overlooked in the fast-paced world of social media, including what it’s like to make art–and navigate mental health challenges–during an increasingly complex time in our global history. They also have a comprehensive resource hub for photographers entering the decentralized web, featuring a reading list, podcast recommendations, and more. 

TIMEPieces

TIMEPieces is TIME magazine’s NFT community initiative, with collections that include but are not limited to photography. Over on Discord, which plays host to more than 20,400 members, they have a channel devoted to photography, where you can browse tons of work, discover interesting reads, and connect with leading photographers in the space. Their TIME Stage hosts regular events as well, with an upcoming discussion on security and safety in Web3 and even a guided meditation on the horizon. 

OM

OM is a decentralized, open metaverse incubated by the NFT collector Punk6529, home to the 6529 Museum, one of the world’s leading NFT collections, educational hubs, and lots more. They’re building in real-time, with discussions, input, and suggestions taking place on Discord, where you can connect with more than 19,000 members. Their server also hosts announcements, news, events, general art talks/chats, and beyond. 

The post NFTs, Community Building, and the Metaverse: The Photographer’s Guide to Discord appeared first on Feature Shoot.

The photographer and creative technologist Ebby Amir recently took a trip to Hawaii’s Kalalau Trail. “It was unspeakably beautiful–something that you’d just die to see,” he tells me. “I took thousands of photographs, but I got one panorama of the sunset that captured the journey. It’s one of those shots that made me sit back and think, ‘Wow, that is a gorgeous piece of planet Earth right there. And we only have one planet.’”

For photographers like Amir, who prioritize sustainability, the last year has presented a dilemma: even as non-fungible tokens opened the door to new professional opportunities, they brought with them a hidden environmental cost. That’s because the Ethereum blockchain, the network that powers the majority of NFTs, currently runs on an energy-intensive consensus mechanism called “proof of work.” 

Though the numbers vary, research indicates that the creation of an average NFT has a carbon footprint equivalent to driving 500 miles in a gasoline-powered car. According to Aerial, a sustainability company Amir co-founded, the sale of the Otherside metaverse by Yuga Labs had emitted over 25,000 tonnes of CO2 by May 1st. “That’s roughly the annual emissions of 5,400 cars or 41,000 round trip flights from San Francisco to New York,” Amir shared on Twitter. 

Aerial is an app that helps users offset their carbon emissions. Amir founded the company with two colleagues, Andreas Homer and Ari Sawyers, after considering the carbon footprint associated with traveling for photography. Since the start, the app has tracked individuals’ flights, Uber rides, and so on, while helping them offset those emissions. When crypto art exploded into the mainstream, they received inquiries from artists hoping to do the same with NFTs. 

One of their first partners was the DJ Calvin Harris, who teamed up with them to offset the emissions from his TECHNOFISH NFT drop, with a portion of the proceeds going to conservation projects and emerging carbon-capture tech. One of the first photographers they worked with in the space was Nate Luebbe, aka @NateintheWild. They’ve worked with David Lynch, and they’ve worked with Shakira. 

For the most part, Amir says it’s the artists themselves who are taking the initiative to try to offset the environmental cost associated with NFTs. Here’s how it works on Aerial: you enter the address of your collection, and the app calculates its footprint based on the energy consumption of the Ethereum network and the average gas used per transaction. They then share the number of carbon credits needed to offset those emissions. You can purchase them through the app. 

One carbon credit represents one ton of carbon dioxide removed from our planet’s atmosphere. Credits can be created by any organization working to reduce or capture carbon emissions. Aerial works with projects that have been verified by a body such as Verra, the American Carbon Registry, or the Gold Standard. 

It’s important to underscore the fact that purchasing a carbon credit does not reduce the emissions of your NFT drop, so we’re still responsible for those emissions. Credits are simply meant to offset them. Unfortunately, recent research also indicates that millions of trees would need to be planted to offset the emissions associated with NFTs. For that reason, carbon offsetting isn’t an easy “fix” to the blockchain’s environmental problem, and it isn’t a long-term solution. 

Instead, a long-term solution will come when blockchains run on less energy-intensive systems. And while Ethereum currently runs on a proof of work mechanism, they do plan to switch to a more efficient “proof of stake” system, which the team says could cut emissions by more than 99%. Unfortunately, switching over isn’t easy, and Ethereum hasn’t done it yet. In the meantime, those emissions continue. 

Some blockchains, including Tezos, Solana, and Polygon, already use a proof of stake system, and many artists have used marketplaces that run on those blockchains to create more environmentally-friendly NFTs. If you want to reduce your NFT emissions, using a “clean” blockchain and marketplace is currently the way to do it. 

Still, Ethereum is where artists tend to find the most opportunities to connect with collectors, just because it’s the most widely used, with the largest pool of buyers and trading volume. For that reason, the average Ethereum NFT sells for more money than those found on other blockchains (for now). In that case, when minting on Ethereum, offsetting is one thing individuals can–and should–do. “Until there is a long-term solution, mitigation methods like carbon offsetting can help ease that path,” Amir explains. 

At Aerial, the team works with a variety of reforestation and forest conservation projects. They also support Charm Industrial, a company that designs and operates advanced carbon removal technology, as well as the ocean-based project SeaTrees, devoted to planting trees and protecting blue carbon.

Aerial has also partnered with artists who want to support local projects in their areas. And if they want to, artists could work directly with conservation projects to help offset their emissions. “Anyone can plug in their collection address and get a report from us on the numbers associated with their drop,” Amir says. “If they, for example, found an organization they liked that was willing to cover the three to five to 5,000 carbon credits that were necessary to offset their drop, they can go ahead and do that. But we also have a very simple checkout flow where they can purchase those credits straight from us.” 

Credits are more affordable than you might think. “Typically, individual drops and smaller sales will only require a couple of carbon credits,” Amir says. “Each carbon credit is $16. Where you see more is with the huge drops, like these 10,000 collections, where the numbers add up. But those collections do quite well. We recently partnered with Moonbirds, who sold out in a couple of minutes, and their floor price is now something like 21.5 ETH. They raised $200 million in the first four days of their sale, and then they committed to a large offset, which was great to see.” 

The environmental issues associated with cryptocurrency and crypto art are serious. “It’s not a problem that is going to be solved overnight,” Amir says. “But it is a problem that is being tackled by everyone doing something together. There are artists who are doing something about their carbon emissions, communicating that to their collectors and followers, and establishing an expectation within the Web3 community that you should offset the emissions you cause.”

Carbon offsetting in the NFT space has faced some criticism online, due to the fact that the blockchain is still emitting a lot carbon, no matter which way you cut it. But at the same time, if everyone did it, it would make a significant difference. “I think a lot of people see offsetting as a ‘token,’” Amir tells me. “And you know, on a one-off basis, it might be easy to say that, but as a whole, we’ve offset tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon and are only growing. When you sit back and look at it, we’re having a real impact. And when you look at the artists and the brands that we’ve been able to work with, it’s creating a real shift in the cultural perception of sustainability.” 

Through his travels, Amir has seen the consequences of climate change firsthand, from the melting glaciers of Iceland to the changing weather patterns of Hawaii, and that informs his work, at Aerial and also behind the camera. He wants to create images that capture our planet’s diversity–and show us what’s at stake. On that recent trip he took to Hawaii, he was joined by his two Aerial co-founders. Earlier this year, that sunset panorama he created at the Kalalau Trail was minted as his first-ever NFT, through the Foundation platform. “Naturally, this sale will be offset with Aerial,” he says. 

The post This Company Is Helping NFT Artists Offset Their Carbon Footprints appeared first on Feature Shoot.

For the first time in 124 years, a statue in Charleston, South Carolina comes down, as part of an overdue reckoning with our nation’s legacy of racial injustice. In Guatemala, a photographer tries to make sense of a traumatic event that happened in his childhood. In New Mexico, farmers turn to regenerative agriculture, while across the world, in a seaside town in Ghana, fishermen struggle to survive as foreign fishing vessels deplete their waters.

One artist, navigating her 40s and grieving the loss of her father, finds a way to show us what depression feels like. Another tries to see the world through the eyes of her nephew, who has a rare and severe form of epilepsy. 

These are just a few of the projects recognized by the non-profit CENTER Santa Fe as part of their Grants and Award program, given annually to photography projects completed and in progress. The nine artists chosen this year use different tools, media, and approaches to examine some of the most critical issues of our time, including climate change, systemic racism, and mental health. 

To start, the winner of the Development Grant, which provides support to a project in progress, is Maximilian Thuemler, whose work has taken him along the coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina. Born From the Limb comprises self-portraits, performances, landscapes, and still lifes that together tell the story of places that carry the weight of a traumatic history. On Jekyll Island in Georgia, he takes us back to the site where the Wanderer, a ship carrying hundreds of kidnapped and enslaved West African people, once made its landing. 

In Charleston, Thuemler shows us Gadsden’s Wharf, one of several South Carolina ports through which an estimated one hundred thousand enslaved people were forcibly brought into the United States. And in Marion Square, he arrives at the place where a looming statue of John C. Calhoun once stood. He photographed that spot in September of 2020, just months after it was removed; in place of Calhoun, a longtime defender of slavery, there’s only open sky and sunlight.  

David Walter Banks, the winner of CENTER’s Launch Grant, grounds his work in the landscape as well, while providing a glimmer of hope as to how the future might be different from the past. His project, Practice Resurrection, shows an alternative to industrial food production, following people like Ron Finley, whose urban gardening project feeds people throughout South Los Angeles, where he grew up, and Leslie Wiser and Sarah Deragon, who run a community-supported agriculture farm in California. 

CENTER’s Environmental Award goes to Esha Chiocchio, whose project Good Earth covers regenerative agriculture in New Mexico, revealing how farmers are sequestering carbon, improving soil health, and creating stronger communities. From the planting of drought-tolerant trees to the practice of urban rain-catching, she shows how people are pulling together and getting creative to help address the climate crisis. 

The Multimedia Award winner is Dan Fenstermacher, who also covers food and the environment, albeit thousands of miles away. Food Chain is the story of fishermen living and working in the towns of Ada, Ghana, and Prampram, Cape Coast, where their families have lived and worked for generations. As he learned while visiting last summer, these fishermen, and their families and communities, are now facing significant pressure due to overfishing from foreign vessels and an increase in plastic pollution. Their future is uncertain. 

The idea of history, memory, and trauma emerges once more and in different forms in the work of the photographer Luis Corzo, who takes home CENTER’s Social Award. Pasaco, 1996 retraces an event that happened in the artist’s family when he was a young child in Guatemala; in 1996, he and his father were kidnapped and held for ransom by the organized crime group Los Pasaco. 

Corzo’s father was tortured and held for 30 days, and Corzo was released after 33. The project combines archival documents and media with Corzo’s photographs of significant locations and the people whose lives were affected by what happened, weaving together a one-of-a-kind investigation that touches on crime, violence, and capital punishment. 

CENTER recognizes photographers working across genres, from documentary to fine art and everything in between. Jess T. Dugan, the judge for the Social Award, also named two Honorable Mentions: one, one thousand… by Debe Arlook and A Permanent Home in the Mouth of the Sun by Hannah Altman. 

In different ways, family becomes a connective thread tying each of Dugan’s selections together. Arlook tells the story of a mother and son: her sister Lori and nephew David. David, now 28, has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a rare but severe form of epilepsy; Lori is his caregiver. Lori’s spiritual practice and David’s ways of perceiving the world helped inform Arlook’s process. While David is non-verbal, she asked–and received–his permission to create the project. 

Altman, meanwhile, threads together stories, rituals, and symbols from Yiddish folklore to create a complex tapestry illustrating the Jewish Diaspora. A Permanent Home in the Mouth of the Sun represents a series of “photographs born from Jewish memories,” drawing on ancestral knowledge and a past marked by tradition and resilience to create a poetic and non-linear visual narrative. 

Arista Slater-Sandoval, the winner of CENTER’s Personal Award, approaches the idea of home from another perspective, challenging notions of the feminine ideal in the domestic space. Her project Parable for Hysteria reimagines the home as a site that’s at once ordinary and fraught, evoking feelings of pain or discomfort. While grappling with timeless themes, the work also speaks to a singular moment in time, coming on the heels of a pandemic that kept many of us homebound and disproportionately affected women. 

The Me&Eve Grant is awarded by CENTER annually to one woman, non-binary, or two-spirit photographer over the age of forty. Heather Evans Smith is this year’s winner, taking home the title for her quiet and haunting series Blue. 

The project illustrates the experience of depression in women over forty. Smith was inspired, in part, by research indicating that “women are the most depressed at age 44,” the same age she was when she embarked on the project. The color blue runs throughout the work, a nod to the use of the word “blue” to mean sadness. 

You’ll also find references to the artist’s childhood and her father, whose loss she continues to mourn, carefully woven throughout. In one picture, she’s included a pair of cerulean shoes, a homage to her dad, who often wore Bass Weejuns.

“The funny thing about working on a series about depression is that it is nearly impossible to do when you are down in it,” Smith shared on Instagram recently. She took a break from the work in 2020, returning to it last year. “This past year just felt right,” she said. “The images flowed through me.”

Be sure to check out CENTER’s winners’ page to explore more from this year’s grantees and award-winners. Their work will be presented in November as part of Review Santa Fe, CENTER’s influential portfolio review event. 

The post CENTER’s 2022 Award-Winners Explore Depression, Family Ties, Climate Action, & More appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“For the first time, working on this series, I wasn’t overwhelmed by my discomfort,” the fine art photographer Anna Guadagnini tells me. “Instead, I was channeling it to create beauty.” She was inspired to embark on the project, The Other Side of Joy, after years of grappling with emotional and physical health issues influenced by hormonal shifts. 

“For most of my adult life, I have been going through cycles of feeling like myself for a few weeks to completely falling into sadness, anxiety, and lethargy for periods of one week and sometimes longer,” the artist says. “I have been researching hormone-related issues in women for a long time. It all started in my late 20s when I decided to stop taking the contraceptive pill, as it was beginning to make me feel unwell. 

“I suddenly found myself having to deal with symptoms that had been blocked by the hormonal therapy until that moment. Symptoms included mood swings, debilitating headaches, feeling out of control, suddenly feeling sad and hopeless, body aches, very painful periods, acne flare-ups, and more strange and unexpected symptoms like bleeding gums or sudden dizziness and uncontrollable hunger before a period.”

She went to the doctor, who ordered tests. She had her thyroid checked and her hormone levels checked; the bloodwork came back normal. She learned to cope on her own through herbs, supplements, and yoga. Then, recently, she learned about PMDD, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, a severe and often debilitating form of PMS. 

“I dug deeper and discovered forums and blogs where women were discussing these issues,” Guadagnini remembers. “I could recognize myself in their words. Most of them were talking about how they felt trapped in this endless cycle of becoming a completely different person a week or two before their periods.”

Unfortunately, despite its severity, the condition is regularly misdiagnosed. When it’s correctly diagnosed, the treatment options might include hormonal therapy, mental health therapy, antidepressants, or mood stabilizers. In severe cases, a hysterectomy might be necessary, causing the body to go directly into menopause.  

“I think that this condition is still widely misunderstood and possibly overlooked,” the photographer continues. “In the medical community, from what I found in my research, there seems to be a debate on whether it is a ‘cultural bound syndrome’ or it really exists. In my opinion, based on my own experiences and those of female friends of all ages, the word that best describes the response to a woman complaining about hormonal-related symptoms is ‘dismissed.’” 

Over the course of her research, the idea for the photographs began to emerge. Guadagnini has photographed herself since college, mostly out of necessity; she’s always available. But with this series, placing herself in the frame took on another layer of meaning. 

“When you put yourself in front of the lens, you become part of the story you are trying to tell, and something starts happening,” she says. “It is like therapy–empowering but also difficult at times, as it makes you notice things about yourself that were hidden inside your subconscious. It becomes a process of discovery.” She worked at home in her London studio and in Italy, close to her family home, using objects that were available to her. 

The artist drew inspiration from Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, the feminist classic by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. “I used this book as a guide, reading some of the chapters over and over and repeating sentences in my head as mantras,” Guadagnini says now. 

With them, she turned more and more to the natural world, discovering motifs meant to represent “the graceful but also destructive power of Mother Nature.” She admits, “While the initial idea of the project was to raise awareness around the issue of PMDD, the series has also become a celebration of the feminine universe. 

“The title of the series came from the intention of turning struggle into beauty. PMDD stands for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, and I concentrated on the word ‘dysphoric,’ which is the opposite of euphoric. I wanted to emphasize the idea that weakness can be a strength. The other side of joy is not the opposite of joy. It is another way of looking at joy.” 

At first, Guadagnini hesitated to release the work publicly, though remembering how she felt when she first read about PMDD–the recognition and the relief–encouraged her to take the leap. She’s glad she did.“Other women reacted by telling me their own stories, how frustrated they felt with the way they were treated at a doctor’s appointment, or just how they could relate in some way to my experience,” she says.

“I am starting to collect experiences from the people around me and reach out to online communities presenting my work in the hope that others will want to share their thoughts and experiences with me. I am planning to collect these reactions and intertwine them with my work.” In one photograph, Fragments, she’s physically incorporated the words of other women, printed on torn pages. 

For the artist herself, making this work has been cathartic and healing. She still remembers going outside at night to shoot Insomnia and Lethargy. Her friends helped bring her vision to life. In those two photographs, she’s on a bed, surrounded by red flower petals. Her hair forms a blindfold, obscuring her view. The landscape is mysterious, shadowy, and just beyond reach. Looking back, she says it was a magical evening, the air thick with wonder and awe. She felt at peace with the darkness. 

All images © Anna Guadagnini

The post When It Comes to Hormonal Issues, Women Are Often Dismissed. This Artist Is Trying to Change That. appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“Some people called in a moth outbreak,” Shira Gold tells me. “Others, a pandemic.” She’s talking about a smaller, local event that took place at roughly the same time as the Covid pandemic: in the summer of 2020, the population of Western hemlock looper moths in Vancouver soared as part of a natural, three-year “outbreak cycle.” The cycle repeats every eleven to fifteen years, depending on environmental conditions. 

Throughout the outbreak, the photographer saw moths populate the city; she noticed them in the trees and close to the lights. But Gold truly came face-to-face with what some dubbed the “Mothpocalypse” while visiting ??????Rice Lake in North Vancouver: to her astonishment, the surface of the water was shrouded in the delicate insects. “They covered the lake like an ornate lace cloth,” she remembers. “There must have been hundreds of thousands, often laying wing-to-wing. There were no sounds, just stillness. Visual stillness. Audible stillness. They had all died.” 

It was sad, and it was beautiful. It took her breath away. In the background, around the world, another pandemic raged. Millions of people would be killed by the coronavirus by the time the moths returned the next summer.

Gold, like many of us, navigated a year of shifting rules and regulations, walking a tightrope of uncertainty and fear. She felt pulled in all directions. All the while, she couldn’t stop thinking about the moths on the lake, haunting and ethereal. The insects symbolized the preciousness and fragility of life, but more than that, they came to represent “our universal desire to seek light in the midst of darkness.” Moths, like butterflies, are symbols of adaption, renewal, and survival. 

By A Thread was born of those quiet and lonely months. The photographs themselves are c composites, created with photographs made at Rice Lake. She gathered materials, including cocoons and silk threads made by ????The Silk Weaver Studio on Granville Island, Vancouver. She arranged them on her scanner, along with sewing threads, and then she painstakingly put the final images together in Photoshop, using both scanned and photographed elements. 

“I knew there needed to be severe linear and inorganic lines that the moths were almost strung from, hung on by, or escaping from,” Gold explains. “There were so many references to lines during this time: ‘tow the line,’ ‘walk the line,’ ‘hold the line,’ ‘wait in line,’ and, of course, stand between the two lines, six feet apart.” The cocoons came to represent the idea of home–safe and warm but also easily breached or endangered.  

Gold worked when her kids were in online classes or after they went to bed. She says making the images was like putting together a large puzzle using many tiny pieces. It was also therapeutic. Making pictures helped her cope.  “I have always found that in times of extreme struggle and transition, in grief and in growth, we can see the most beauty if we are open to it,” the artist says. She released the series on the day the pandemic-related restrictions were lifted. It was time. 

The “moth pandemic” is now over. Western hemlock looper moths are native to British Columbia, and the moth outbreak is a natural occurrence that benefits the surrounding landscape. But scientists say that climate change is likely to make them more frequent and intense, and those changes will have a ripple effect across the ecosystem. In 2021, for example, a drought hit parts of B.C, and extreme heat put increased pressure on trees in the area.

Gold photographed all the moths in situ, never moving them from the surface of the lake. I asked her why she didn’t bring any of them home with her to photograph in the studio, along with the thread and cocoons. “The landscape of their resting place felt very sacred,” she tells me. “Interrupting that wasn’t something I considered.” The next Western hemlock looper moth outbreak cycle won’t happen for at least a decade. It’s expected to arrive between 2032 and 2036. 

All images © Shira Gold

The post Vancouver’s “Mothpocalypse” Highlights the Fragility of Our Planet appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Troy Colby doesn’t remember the day he made this photograph of his youngest child on the couch at home, but he thinks it must have been a weekend, as his kid fell asleep there, basking in the sunlight filtering in through the curtains. Maybe his son had a headache that day; he’s not sure. But even now, looking at the image makes him feel calm and peaceful. 

That light–and that sense of peace–runs throughout the photographer’s book, The Fragility of Fatherhood, out now by Too Tired Press. You can find it in the crumpled sheets and closed eyes. But for every moment of solitude and stillness, it seems there’s another that captures the headlong pace of childhood. The book is about being a dad, but it could just as easily be about growing up. 

Its pages are equally filled with the incessant moving of being a kid: the jumping on the bed, the running to the door. Every once in a while, one of the artist’s children’s faces will be just out of focus, as if caught in the corner of his eye while they’re rushing past in the hustle and bustle of everyday life at home. Sometimes, they’re hiding under the sheets or seen behind glass, close but somehow far away too. 

For all that tenderness, the book also contains everything else that comes with true, enduring intimacy–including heartbreak, loneliness, and grief. Most of the work in the book was made before the pandemic hit and life was still “normal,” lending them an innocence that almost hurts. During the pandemic, Colby contended with the pain and restlessness of depression. It got worse as lockdowns continued. “We as a family unit also experienced a good amount of loss,” he tells me. “Three of those losses were miscarriages.” 

Making pictures during the pandemic was difficult, but Colby has been picking up his camera a lot more these days. “We moved to a house out in the country, tucked up in the trees,” he says. He gets even more sunlight now, and he’s been able to pour himself into the manual labor and everyday chores that the house carries with it. 

Parents regularly reach out to Colby to say they identify with his images. While some are dads, he says they’re mostly moms. Men, he explains, are taught to be “tough” and never show vulnerability, especially as it relates to the intense joys and hardships of being a dad. He’s hoping the photographs can help change that. 

Today, Colby continues to document his family. But in many ways, they’re different pictures from the ones he made before. His family is growing and shifting, and the photographs are changing too. The book, then, represents just a single chapter in a story that’s still unfolding. On the day we talked, he said that the picture of his youngest on the couch was his favorite in the book at the moment. He also told me it changes every day, so today, it’s surely a different one. 

Colby’s youngest, the one he found dozing on the couch on a weekend long ago, was eight when work in the book began. He’s a teenager now. The photographer says he’s at around the age where his kids have seemed less interested in making pictures with their dad. He respects that. “Now, he is fifteen and would not be caught without his shirt on,” Colby says. “It is a gentle memory of our little boy, who is growing up quickly.” 

Get your copy of The Fragility of Fatherhood here. 

All images © Troy Colby

The post Following a Period of Depression, A Father Picks Up His Camera Once More appeared first on Feature Shoot.

In 2018, Paola Franqui, also known as Monaris, found herself in a little market in Helsinki, Finland. “I started noticing so many people walking with their hands behind their backs, one after the other,” she remembers. “I just started taking photos.” She explored the market for a couple of hours, and by the time she left, she’d photographed more than fifty people, each with the clasped hands. One held a map; another, a cigarette; a third, a pair of dress shoes. 

For the next few years, as she traveled the world, she returned to that same motif, finding it across countries and cultures. Each pair of hands seemed to record the personal history of its owner. “This is something that I did mostly for me,” she says. “I started it because I loved it.” In August 2021, she found a permanent home for the work on the blockchain, selecting 30 photographs to be part of the 1/1 NFT collection Collecting Hands. 

She did it all in one day, staying up late into the night to get the images uploaded onto OpenSea. “I didn’t plan it,” she admits. “I didn’t promote it. I just told one of my very good friends, Dave Krugman.” Krugman bought the first photograph in the collection, one of Monaris’s personal favorites. It’s a self-portrait evocative of Vivian Maier, featuring both the artist’s reflection in a store window and the goings-on inside. The clasped hands of a security guard, seen on the other side, sit at the center of the photographer’s chest, forming a beating heart. 

The photographer J.N. Silva also supported the project, purchasing a pair of hands from the streets of New York City. The whole collection sold out in under an hour. The original pieces were listed for 0.3 ETH. As of this writing, the floor price is 1 ETH, with the highest last sale being 4 ETH, or the equivalent of $11,245.40. That one, made in Naples, Italy, is currently owned by the prolific photographer and collector Isaac “Drift” Wright. 

Monaris comes from a rich history of artists enchanted by hands. In 1508, Albrecht Dürer drew hands in prayer. In The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1787), Plato sits with his right hand placed atop his left, somberly, in his lap. Degas’s Little Dancer (c. 1880) features a ballet dancer with her hands clasped behind her back. In 1927, Berenice Abbott photographed the hands of Jean Cocteau. 

The people in Monaris’s photographs are, by and large, strangers. “I think I would have to say that 90% of the hands in my collection are from strangers,” Monaris says. “I just like the mystery that comes with documenting these moments candidly. I like to come up with stories in my mind.” 

Monaris is still collecting hands. She has hundreds upon hundreds of them now. The other day, she was at the beach when she saw a small child, maybe two years old, holding her hands behind her back, the same gesture she’s seen over and over, across the world. “What makes people do that?” she wondered. She didn’t photograph the little girl, but she remembers her well. “I was just waiting to get in the water when I saw her,” the artist says. “I didn’t have my phone or my camera or anything. It’s it was just one of those times where you take the photo in your mind, and you let it go.” 

You can follow the artist on Twitter at @monaris.

All images © Monaris

The post Human Hands and the Stories They Tell, in Photos appeared first on Feature Shoot.

What does Web3 mean for photographers? How should you go about pricing your NFTs? What are collectors really looking for when buying art? Why have so many photographers become art collectors themselves? Is there a place for photojournalism in the NFT space, or is it all about pretty landscapes? 

Twitter Spaces, created to host live talks, have the answers for new photographers hoping to navigate the world of the decentralized web. For many, the audio component allows for a kind of intimacy and spontaneity that’s rarely found on text and image-only social media. It’s like listening to a podcast, but having the chance to contribute to the conversation. Here are some people to follow for consistently engaging Spaces. 

Feature Shoot (@FeatureShoot) 

Feature Shoot kicked off our Twitter Spaces with in-depth discussions on the future of community building in Web3, mental health in the digital age, common mistakes made by photographers in the NFT space, why photographers become collectors, and more. Episodes are hosted by our founder, Alison Zavos. 

Omar Z Robles (@OmarZRobles)

The photographer Omar Z Robles hosts a show on Twitter Spaces, where he introduces us to some of the best projects and collections in the space right now. He also digs into complex topics relating to NFT collecting, from what’s happening in the metaverse to pricing trends. From discussing what makes a photo valuable–today and in 20 years–to the difficulty of knowing how to talk and write about your work, his shows cover the ins and outs of life as a photographer, in the NFT space and beyond. 

Kris Graves Projects NFT (@KGPNFT)

KGP, run by the photographer Kris Graves, is creating the first editioned, multi-page NFT photobooks. Their discussions on Twitter Spaces are hosted by the artist Marshall Scheuttle.“Our weekly space, titled KGP NFT WKLY, provides a topic-based roundtable with a group of Artists or Collectors in the NFT Space,” Scheuttle tells us. 

“The idea is to create an environment where we can not only make new connections with Artists and Patrons but also provide a place to further the discourse surrounding the issues arising in the NFT Space and their relationship to the history of Photography.” With episodes about curation, sequencing, and editing in digital spaces, they just entered their second season. 

Chikai Ohazama (@lifeofc)

The NFT collector Chikai Ohazama has a show on Spaces called NFT Coffee Break, where he chats with photographers about their creative processes and collections, discusses the future of curation, and covers the ins and outs of the industry. Ohazama collects artists of all genres but has an eye for photography, keeping us posted on some of the latest projects in the space and sharing behind-the-scenes stories from the artists themselves. 

Assembly (@AssemblyCurated)

Assembly Curated, the fine art photography NFT platform, presents Moving Images, a Twitter Spaces program hosted by Ava Silvery, where they dig into the process and practice behind the work they represent. From a candid talk about navigating motherhood as an artist to a conversation about how art influences society, politics, and culture, this show helps ground what’s happening in the NFT space within the larger history of photography. In one episode co-hosted by Feature Shoot, the team explored the nuances of “slow collecting,” or collecting work you love, beyond the “quick flip.” 

Scott Strazzante (@ScottStrazzante)

Scott Strazzante, a longtime newspaper photojournalist and NFT collector, brings a fresh perspective to the space with reFramed, co-hosted by Barbara Davidson. A recent episode focused on the role of documentary photography in the NFT community, covering the importance of historical and newsworthy work on the blockchain and diving into the complex ethical dilemmas that might come with publishing and sharing works of photojournalism in Web3. 

Ayla El-Moussa (@aylaelmoussa)

The photographer Ayla El-Moussa hosts a Spaces show called A Collector’s Perspective, where she picks the brains of top collectors in the space. With gems like “Collectors aren’t ATM machines” and “Don’t let the market dictate what you produce,” her Spaces give us an unfiltered look and what collectors look for and why. 

Quantum Art (@QuantumNFT)

Quantum Art, a curated NFT platform, hosts regular Quantum Talks with creatives they represent. Most recently, they’ve gone in-depth with some of the digital artists they’ve onboarded, in addition to their roster of photographers. Their shows help situate our understanding of photography within a broader landscape of digital art, computer art, and moving images on the blockchain. 

Light.art (@light_artists)

Light.art publishes photography NFTs, with the goal of bridging the gap between the digital and traditional realms. Their Twitter Spaces cover topics like juggling financial value versus intrinsic value in the arts and the nuances of NFT curating from a collector’s perspective. Episodes are co-hosted by Frederick Van Johnson, who’s also known for hosting the longstanding podcast This Week in Photo, aka TWiP. 

Obscura (@ObscuraDAO)

Obscura, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) created to empower photographers in the NFT space, hosts Twitter Spaces featuring artists they’ve commissioned and partnered with, called Obscura Radio. Their conversations revolve around the projects they have in the works, including a massive archive of found slides; what to expect in the next two to five years as we enter Web3 art galleries; and the wider overlap between traditional photography and NFTs. 

NFT Now (@nftnow)

NFT Now has a few regular shows on Twitter Spaces, including the 1 of 1 Show, which is devoted entirely to photography in the NFT space. Hosted by Dave Krugman and J. N. Silva, episodes have covered topics like why more photographers are minting editions, what “generative photography” is and artists are working with code, and what it means to transition from Web2 into Web3. 

Rug Radio (@RugRadio)

Rug Radio is a decentralized Wed3 media platform, with hosts and creators across the NFT space. While Rug Radio is not limited to photography, they present a weekly Twitter Spaces NFT photography podcast hosted by Cath Simard, Ryan Newburn, and Iurie Belegurschi, the creators of The MetaScapes collection. 

From blending photography and digital art to choosing marketplaces and even knowing when not to mint your work, their conversations offer a point of entry into the vast NFT photography space. Beyond the hype of celebrity projects that sell out in seconds, they cover the years of work that often go into building something special. 

The post If You’re Interested in Photography in Web3, Twitter Spaces Is the Place to Start appeared first on Feature Shoot.

During the pandemic, the photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart found herself taking long walks through the “pockets” of nature sprinkled throughout her Denver suburb. “On one particular morning, I noticed a dead tree ‘vibrating,’” she tells me. “Upon inspection, I saw that it was covered with baby swallows waiting for food.” 

She’d been watching the swallows for a while now, their golden bellies catching the light of early morning as they swooped to catch mosquitos in the grasses below. Her daily walks grew slower, as she paused to observe the birds. After finding this family of swallows, she returned, as spring turned to summer. “I learned to predict when the mother or father was approaching with food because the babies would do a funny dance with their tails and their wings would flap rapidly,” she remembers. 

But then the city sprayed for mosquitos. “A man in an unmarked electric cart with a hose approached and went about spraying for mosquitos without any warning,” Ruddy Burkhart says. She could tell it was an insecticide from the smell in the air. “The very next morning, the swallows were gone,” the artist remembers. “As I like to say: no food, no birds.” 

Ruddy Burkhart’s birds aren’t the only ones affected by pesticide use. In 2020, a study published in ??Nature Sustainability revealed that the US and Canada had lost 29% of their birds since 1970, with that decline linked to cropland expansion and pesticide use. Researchers estimated that grassland bird populations declined by 4% annually from 2008 to 2014, and insect-eating birds by 3%, due to the use of neonicotinoids, a kind of pesticide. Over half of counties in the US lost more than 10% of their grassland birds during that period. 

But not all hope is lost. In the United States, pesticides brought the brown pelican in the United States to the brink of extinction; a ban on DDT and other dangerous pesticides allowed for their recovery. And as it happened, Ruddy Burkhart’s family of swallows was lucky. They survived, and she found them at another lake. By September of last year, the babies were almost fully grown. 

Still, the landscape had changed, and the artist noticed. “Since many fish depend on mosquitos for food, even the fish-eaters became scarce,” she recalls. “Eventually, some birds returned, like the pelicans, egrets, and herons.” She continued to photograph the birds on her walks as part of Evanescence: for things that are fleeting or quickly disappearing, her ode to the natural world during a time of loss and uncertainty. 

She observed the birds, learned their habits, and watched their body language. She respected their space, first and foremost. At the same time, she saw the ways in which human activity put the landscape and its inhabitants at risk. “I often see dogs off-leash and it breaks my heart,” Ruddy Burkhart admits. “Once I passed a snapping turtle laying eggs beside the trail. I quickly turned around, but not before someone’s dog got to them.” 

Ruddy Burkhart is a photo-based artist, and her work isn’t done when she’s captured a moment. It’s only just begun, with the creative process continuing at home. “For this series, I shoot with a DSLR and use Lightroom and Photoshop, where I often utilize multiple shots to ‘create’ a landscape that is still integral to its original scene (being mindful of the type and direction of the lighting, for example),” she explains. “I then add texture while utilizing layering and masking techniques to emphasize the birds.”

For that reason, Evanescence exists at the boundary line between reality and fiction, immortalizing the astonishing beauty of her avian muses while also transporting them to someplace new. “My goal is to create an almost fantasy-like world–a place where creatures can still live their best lives,” she tells me. In her pictures, at least, these “pockets” of wilderness will remain intact, and the birds will be free. 

All images © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart

The post This Photographer Fell in Love with Her Local Birdlife. Then the Pesticides Came. appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“You know, children have an irrepressible urge to draw on walls and floors,” the artist and educator Leyla Emektar admits. As a visual arts teacher in Kocaeli, Turkey, she’s learned to celebrate that impulse rather than discourage it. Once, when she and her pupils were working en plein air, a student was struck with inspiration and decided to draw, with chalk, on the wall of the school’s garden. Seeing the illustration–a picture of a small house–Emektar had an idea. 

Since that day, she’s collaborated with several of her students to create large-scale chalk murals. “We determine the subject for each drawing and create different sketches,” the artist explains. Usually, she lays down the outlines, and the students color in the details. After the work is completed, the student who came up with the idea for the drawing “inhabits” it, and through Emektar’s photography, the artworks come to life. All of the drawings were made in the same spot of ground, making for a consistent pink background. 

Of course, the secret was getting the timing right, as the weather didn’t always align with their plans. “One time, we worked the whole day to complete a drawing, and since it was evening by the time we finished, we postponed the photo shoot for the next day,” Emektar remembers. “Unfortunately, it rained suddenly that night, and the whole drawing was destroyed by the rain.” But they persisted: “we never gave up,” the artist says. 

Eighteen of Emektar’s photographs are now stored on the blockchain as part of the hugely successful NFT collection Children and dreams. It feels especially poignant for a project born in chalk, a fleeting medium, to be preserved on an immutable public ledger, where, in theory, it can be enjoyed by everyone, forever. 

Though the idea for the project originated in 2008, the photographs in the final series were made between 2015 and 2017. Some of the kids in the photographs are teenagers now. The student who drew that first house on the garden wall is an adult. But Emektar hopes that the photographs will serve as a reminder to all of us not to let go of the innocence of childhood–that urge to draw on the walls and floors simply for the joy of it. Children and dreams takes us under the sea and into outer space; the pictures transport us from snowy vistas to blooming fields of wildflowers. 

Still, Emektar’s favorite photograph in the collection isn’t a scene from a fairytale or fantasy. It’s a quiet moment: two figures embracing inside a house, blooming trees and the shining sun surrounding them. If a boundless imagination is a universal part of childhood, so too is the need to feel safe. According to Save the Children, almost 13 million individuals, nearly half of the global refugee population, are children under the age of eighteen. According to UNICEF, 4.3 million children have been displaced due to the war in Ukraine over one month alone, as of late March.  

Houses are actually one of the first things children learn to draw, as is the sun. The necessity of belonging and warmth is something we understand from a very young age. “This photo of mine expresses lots of feelings, such as love, family ties, peace, the importance of serenity, children longing for their homes, and people in need of shelter,” Emektar tells me. “It means so much to me.”

All images © Leyla Emektar. You can follow the artist on Twitter at @LeylaEmektar2. 

The post Children Live Out Their Dreams in This NFT Photo Collection appeared first on Feature Shoot.

DeLovie Kwagala was on a photoshoot when they heard Favour, a young aspiring photographer, tell the sitter, “My mum says girls can be whatever they want.” At the time, Kwagala was working on a project about womxn who inspired them, and Favour was assisting on some shoots, learning the ropes. But in that moment, Favour also became part of the project, titled I Am Womxn. 

Kwagala, the first non-binary queer photographer and social activist in Uganda, grew up surrounded by womxn– “strong Womxn, who did whatever they needed to do to take care of and raise their families.” They looked up to these womxn, but at the same time, they saw how womxn were treated unjustly. “They got shamed for being too difficult and too independent to even be desired by men,” the artist remembers. 

In the media, it was the same message. “When I occasionally got a glimpse of a newspaper stand on my walk to school, womxn only ever made the cover when they were criticized about their body image, dress code, or not being married,” they tell me.

“I grew up without a television or internet, but when I first bought a smartphone at eighteen and joined social media, it was like a brochure about how womxn looked and weighed–a whole new world that stirred huge insecurities within me. I went through a period of low self-esteem. It wasn’t an easy prison to break out of. But I kept searching until I found those who dared to be different and steer further away from societal normalcy.” 

The initial seeds that would later blossom to become I Am Womxn were planted at the start of the #MeToo movement. “I watched a revolution of womxn regaining their confidence and voices, even when all the odds were placed against them,” they remember now. “I watched them take their power back, both online and in real life. For the first time, it was okay to speak up.”

Still, the fight for equality was far from over. Even at the height of the movement, the artist saw men take pains to avoid the topic. Meanwhile, blame was shifted onto victims and survivors, who were scrutinized and questioned. And eventually, discussions of #MeToo slowed and faded from the headlines.

“I was motivated to create something that would be a constant reminder of the power of the Pussy,” Kwagala continues. “At the same time, I wanted to defy social standards around body image and champion the inclusion of those that are constantly questioned about the validity of their womxnhood. The photographs became an affirmation that we all stand together.” 

The use of “womxn,” in Kwagala’s title and this story, is intentional. “The spelling womxn is the more inclusive and alternative term to the word ‘woman’ or ‘women,’” they explain. “It was introduced back in the 1970s by intersectional feminists to avoid perceived sexism, to include trans womxn, and also to have a term that didn’t include ‘man’ or ‘men’. 

“I personally found it fitting in this age and era, with the rise of pronoun usage and their importance. I find it liberating because not every womxn uses the ‘she’ pronouns; some are they/them. The term womxn simply gives room to evolve into whoever you are with no limitations.” 

The womxn they chose to be part of the project have unique experiences and identities, though they’re all united by resilience. They include the photographer’s family, friends, and lovers. “I needed the project to start at home, with the womxn who inspired me daily and those who looked up to me, to highlight the womxn who looked like my mother, to blur our differences and similarities and simply be,” Kwagala says.

That idea of “simply being” formed the foundation for all the photo sessions. “All of my personal projects center on the freedom of self-direction, and this wasn’t any different,” the photographer says. “First thing, I ask my participants is to pose in the way they want to be perceived by the world. They choose what to wear, makeup or no makeup, and honestly, most of the time is spent catching up about life and having conversations around their understanding of the project and what it means to be a part of it.” 

For the project, Kwagala, who used to do tribal body painting at festivals and events, brought along the body paint. Their sitters chose what to use and how. Some painted their bodies, and others did not. 

“Most of the womxn I photographed naked had never even dreamt of doing it,” the artist remembers. “Samantha had spent all her life being called fat, and as we photographed, she voluntarily took off layer by layer. She said it was time to take her power back, to show the world that her fatness wasn’t going to stop her from being great and showing up as she is. 

“After the session, she cried and hugged me for letting her simply be. She later sent me a message that said, ‘De, you sparked something in me today that I didn’t know I needed. You held space for my vulnerability. I didn’t walk away as I came, but with a new sense of bravery and confidence.’ I cried because if there is a purpose that I want from my work, it is exactly that feeling. Samantha gave my work a purpose that day.” 

Built from the foundation forged by womxn and non-binary artists who came before, Kwagala’s work is now paving the way for the next generation. The portrait they made with Favour, the aspiring photographer, is the first in the I Am Womxn series. “At the time, she was starting to notice more and more about gender roles in society, so I was constantly reminding her that girls can do anything boys do,” Kwagala tells me. “I reminded her that there is no such thing as gender and that there shouldn’t be any limitations around having to choose between wanting to be Spiderman or Wonder Woman. You can be both.” 

DeLovie Kwagala is a member of Black Women Photographers, a global community bringing together Black womxn and non-binary photographers. To learn more about Black Women Photographers, visit their website, and follow along on Instagram at @blackwomenphotographers. All images © DeLovie Kwagala.

The post ‘I Am Womxn’: A Photographer Celebrates Power and Pride Beyond the Patriarchy appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“I used to show up to my friend Shaun’s place at 7:00 in the morning to catch the right light,” the photographer Matthew Morrocco remembers. “I’d be setting up while he was still asleep.” The artist embarked on what would become Complicit, a series of self-portraits and portraits of older men, when he was in his early twenties. At the time, he wanted the photographs to “feel like falling in love for the first time,” that warm sunlight reminiscent of balmy days in the summertime. It’s now ten years later, and the pictures never left him. 

Morrocco embarked on the project, in part, as a way to satisfy his anxiety and curiosity about aging. But he also wanted to change the narrative about who gets seen, photographed, or immortalized in art, shifting the focus onto older gay men he met online. “I honestly have no idea how I chose the men in these photographs,” the artist admits. 

“I feel like I’ve been answering this question for years, and I still really don’t know. Some people just feel honest in their appearance, and others feel fabricated. A good picture, to me, is about honesty, so I guess it was that. It was really about following whatever made the most sense in the moment.” What made sense in the moment included eating plums in the park with Olaf, dancing with Dennis, kissing Rolf, sitting on a tricycle at Shaun’s place, and lounging in bed with David. 

“I was very deliberate in how I staged the photos, but I also wanted to blur the line between real-life candid scenes and staged photos,” Morrocco says. “I used a 4×5 view camera to shoot a lot of the scenes, which I used in tandem with a digital camera to loosen things up. I often rephotographed a scene two or three times, and went back to photograph the same people over about five years.” 

For all the tenderness contained within the photographs themselves, Morrocco also understood the weight of history, with many of these men having survived the AIDs crisis and decades of homophobia and discrimination. He listened to their stories. “I think honestly there were just a lot of stories about suffering,” Morrocco tells me. “Being older and growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, it was hard to avoid.”

For Morrocco, who made himself just as vulnerable as his sitters over the course of the project, making the pictures–and sharing them with the world–brought its own challenges. “It was very emotionally taxing,” he says. “Both making the work and after it became public. I still have relationships with some of the guys which are good and healthy and nice relationships. But truthfully, I opened up something really raw and real to make this work and it took me many years to move on from it.” 

The mirror became a recurring motif throughout the work, reflecting the artist’s face as well as his sitters’. “I had read somewhere that Caravaggio used mirrors to bounce light and create his dramatic images, and was thinking about Picasso’s cubism, and Velazquez’s Las Meninas,” Morrocco explains. “I wanted to do something similar with photographs and assert the work as something prescient to contemporary culture–like creating a distinct sense of not only my work but of culture today. I think the mirror selfie is so relevant to millennials, and now my work has that cultural marker of being from a distinct time period in the early 2000s, when we were all so worried about self-obsession.” 

Complicit, like the work of Caravaggio and Velazquez, was created to last and endure. It first came to the blockchain in 2021, and in late April of 2022, it underwent an update. The current NFT collection has its own independent smart contract, which is more stable for collectors and gives the artist more control. “I think my work had always been NFTs; I just didn’t know it,” Morrocco says now. “One of the most important words in the NFT world is ‘community,’ and the portraits I made built a network of people that supported and cared about and were part of the work. 

“What’s more, is that I think the permanence of the blockchain was an important factor. I grew up in photography at a time when it was really easy to share your work, but it was always ephemeral. I was making pictures that I wanted to stand the test of time, like 19th-century paintings, or Renaissance frescos. Without NFTs, the work was just another Instagram post, which, to me, didn’t make sense. Now, the work hangs in digital galleries and personal viewing spaces around the world. It brings a sense of dignity and respect to the people I photographed.” 

The photographs took a long and winding road to get here. They’ve appeared in The New Yorker and have been collected by the RISD Museum and the Guggenheim Library. Shared widely and internationally, they were collected in book form with a publication by Matte Magazine. At one point, Morrocco says they were displayed as advertisements on Pornhub. They were also turned into a meme without his consent. 

“At first, I was excited about the meme; I wanted the work to be seen,” he remembers. “But after a while, I was sad that all of my hard work was getting distilled into a joke. I think it made me determined to keep working on the legacy of the project. In the end, it was a good thing because it meant I kept working to ensure it had a good home. But for better or worse, it is a part of the history of the project. I think memes are important because it means the work speaks to a huge audience of people.” 

I asked Morrocco if releasing the photographs as NFTs have helped him reclaim ownership of the work. The answer is more complicated than “yes” or “no.” “I honestly don’t know,” he says. “I think, if anything, NFTs have helped me realize that ownership doesn’t really matter because operationally, it’s about the collective whole. In my opinion, NFTs are not essentially about ownership but rather about participation in a community or group of like-minded individuals that believe in an idea that the NFT represents. 

“Before, I was always very concerned about what people were seeing. I was try to control the narrative of my work. But I think what’s amazing about the NFT space is that it’s more fun to see what other people like about the work. The community that is built naturally helps to cultivate the legacy of the work. I feel a lot less alone in the whole process.” 

That sense of belonging has been a driving force in the project for more than a decade now, though finding it was never easy. “I wanted the work to feel effortless, soft and gentle,” the artist shared on Twitter recently. “But making this work was never effortless. For me, making these pictures was relentless. For years, I worked finding subjects, building real relationships, earning their trust and their respect, dragging my camera and my lighting setups around the world, by myself, day after day, month after month, year after year.” 

Morrocco got to know many of these men’s homes intimately, over the course of years. Shaun, of course, was one of them. In one portrait, Shaun is light-dappled, his gaze ambiguous. You can see the photographer, out-of-focus and upside-down, in the background. He’s stretched out over the bed, his arms extended–reaching beyond the frame. “Sometimes, I would spend hours waiting for the sunlight to hit just the right spot,” the artist tells me. “We would get some lunch together while we waited.”

Follow the artist on Twitter at @matthewmorrocco. All images © Matthew Morrocco

The post A Photographer Explores Male Vulnerability, Desire, and the Aging Body appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“Growing up, I saw a lot of Black women wearing dark liner and gloss, bamboo earrings, long nails, and sometimes red hair,” the photographer Jada Imani M tells me. “I always loved colorful hair on Black women. I have early memories of Janet Jackson in The Velvet Rope era and Kelis in the ‘Caught Out There’ music video.” 

At the same time, however, M also grew up aware of systemic racism, natural hair discrimination, and the pressures placed on Black women at work. She never saw long nails, bamboo earrings, or red hair in the workplace. “It was seen as unprofessional and/or ghetto to wear big hoops to work and church,” the photographer says. “Even in some schools, you could not wear hoop earrings larger than a quarter, if at all.” 

In 1999, the same year Kelis’s iconic Hype Williams-directed “Caught Out There” video was released, employees at Federal Express were fired for wearing locs. This kind of discimination is still pervasive today. In 2010, when company in Alabama rescinded a job to a woman who would not cut her locs, a district court ruled that the company was not in violation of federal law. In April of this year, a Texas school’s ban on twisted and brained hair prevented a student from attending. 

But people are speaking up, and changes are coming. Just this march, The Crown Act, a bill providing legal protection against hair-based discrimination, passed the US House of Representatives. First passed in California in 2019, that law helped inspire M when she was in the process of creating DEATH TO ASSIMILATION, a photo series in celebration of Black women. 

“When approaching my stylist friend, Liyah, I came ready with an entire pitch desk full of inspiration, the ideal cast, and project description,” she remembers. “I knew I wanted Black femmes to be dressed in blazers, blouses, etc. to play off the idea of professionalism. I already knew the makeup artist I wanted and that I needed a nail tech. Liyah suggested we reach out to Amber to make press ons for the models.” 

The photographs remind me of Hype Williams and the iconic music videos he made for Missy Elliott, TLC, Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson, and, of course, Kelis. M says the influence was not deliberate, though she’s always found inspiration in Williams’s work. “I think I’m subconsciously inspired by Hype Williams all the time,” she says. “His work is so timeless, and it is embedded into my brain at this point. Using a fisheye and building a colorful set was probably that subconscious inspiration kicking in.”

The shoot itself took place at The Dojo Studios in Capitol Heights, Maryland, with the photographer and production team building the set. Then everyone else joined them.  “I just remember all the models dancing and taking selfies together,” M tells me. “One of the best parts of doing a group shoot is the comradery throughout. It’s something I look forward to every time.” 

One of the photographs from the project, featuring Nia the model, appears on the cover of M’s photobook, please say the M. “Nia absolutely killed it,” the photographer tells me. “Part of me saw myself in her. At the time, I had locs myself, and we are close in skin complexion. That representation is so valuable to me. I have decided to live my life under the mentality of DEATH TO ASSIMILATION. I can and will wear my natural hair, show my tattoos, and piercings in any environment. It does not take away from who I am as a person, especially in the workplace.”

Order your copy of please say the M by Jada Imani M here. Jada Imani M is a member of Black Women Photographers, a global community bringing together Black women and non-binary photographers. To learn more about Black Women Photographers, visit their website, and follow along on Instagram at @blackwomenphotographers.

The DEATH TO ASSIMILATION cast includes Sedna (@sednahhh), Marti (@misfit.marti), Edna (@eddiebugatti), Nia (@dangerdoom), Syd (@hiimsydthekid), and Mahogany (@oddmojo). Creative Director/Photographer: Jada (@jadaimanim) Wardrobe Stylist: Liyah (@justamiri). Hair Stylist: Agnes (@aggie_hair). MUA: Chi (@melanated_martian). Nail Artist: Amber (@ajnailedthat). Production Assistants: Muhteyoh (@populroutcast), Chynna (@madenchynna), and Kyri (@sidvivid). 

All images © Jada Imani M 

The post ‘Death to Assimilation’: Celebrating Black Women’s Style Through Photography appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Lisa Sorgini, a photographer based in Bundjalung Country, Australia, discovered this goliath stick insect living in her family’s wattle tree. Across a lifetime, the females of the species might lay as many as a thousand eggs. Sorgini saw this one laying hers, flicking them onto the leaf litter below, where they would be collected by ants and safely stored underground. 

In one of the artist’s photographs, currently on view as part of her exhibition at homecoming gallery, a human hand gently holds the mother stick insect, tilted toward the light, as if to say, “Isn’t she beautiful?” 

The online exhibition, curated by Bill Shapiro, formerly the editor-in-chief of LIFE magazine, is accompanied by a physical exhibition at the MENDO Books flagship store in Amsterdam. The show comprises selections from across Sorgini’s oeuvre, spanning years but tied together by the artist’s painterly sensibility and her commitment to documenting the tenderness and pain of intimacy, family, and early motherhood. “Her pictures feel, to me, like memory itself,” Shapiro says. 

About six years ago, Sorgini gave birth to Ari, her first son. Her mother passed away a few months later. During this time, marked by joy and grief, she started making pictures of her home and family: the baths and swims, the bites of watermelon, the runny noses. She hasn’t stopped since. 

Frustrated by the lack of authentic representations of the complexities of parenting, Sorgini also photographed other mothers and their children. During the pandemic, she created portraits of motherhood in isolation, with her sitters protected–and locked in–by layers of glass. That work, some of which is available at homecoming, was recently published as the book Behind Glass.  

As noted by Anna Altman for The New Yorker, Sorgini’s work does not include the screens and devices of our digital era. In that sense, the photographs are timeless. Comparisons to paintings feel inevitable, given the photographer’s masterful use of light and shadow. A child’s hand, reaching into a juicy watermelon, evokes memories of Caravaggio’s Saint Thomas. Sorgini’s attention to detail when it comes to flesh feels evocative of Rembrandt, who famously included garter marks when painting the leg of Bathsheba at her toilet. 

The pictures are ageless and universal, but they do not exist outside of time. Sorgini made some of them during the “Black Summer” of 2020, when Australia contended with devastating brushfires, flooding, and a global pandemic. The exhibition at homecoming roughly coincides with some of the worst flooding in Australian history; the pictures of stillness and life at home seem particularly poignant now, as, in March, thousands in the area were forced to leave their homes and the country declared a national emergency. 

Sorgini’s work speaks to the heartache and anxiety of being a mother at a time when the future feels unimaginably precarious, while also managing to find infinite grace and belonging in an increasingly imperiled natural world. Time and time again, Sorgini quietly turns out attention to the everlasting beauty of nature, a healing balm in the age of climate change: the roots of a strangler fig; swans on the water; and a female goliath stick bug, resting in someone’s hand, having just laid her eggs. 

Browse the online exhibition, curated by Bill Shapiro, and buy prints here. You can follow homecoming gallery on Instagram at @homecoming.gallery. 

All images © Lisa Sorgini, courtesy homecoming gallery

The post The Raw Beauty of Early Motherhood, Unfiltered appeared first on Feature Shoot.

“In 2011, I was in a village in Thailand near the Cambodian border, and we visited a camp where there was a large bull elephant chained under a tree,” the photojournalist Adam Oswell tells me. “He had terrible injuries and scarring on his head from constant beatings from a bullhook and was very stressed. I later found out he was a wild bull recently caught in a Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. He was a massive animal, and they had absolutely broken him with pain and fear-based training. I’m not sure what became of him.” 

For about a decade now, Oswell has been covering the elephant tourism industry. His photograph of another elephant, this one of a crowd surrounding an elephant performing at an underwater zoo in Thailand, recently won the Natural History Museum’s 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award for the Photojournalism category. Along with the industry itself, the photographer has followed the pressure it’s placed on wild elephant populations in Thailand. 

As demand for elephant attractions rose, elephants like this one were taken from the wild after being separated from their herds. Their mothers were often killed defending them. From there, these elephants are fed into the tourist trade, with both the animals and their keepers, known as mahouts, leased by camps for tourists. For a long time, many of these businesses profited from the exploitation of both the elephants and the mahouts, Oswell explains. 

When the pandemic hit and tourism collapsed, the mahouts were forced to return home to their villages, bringing the elephants with them. For the elephants, this transition marked a significant departure from life in the camps. “Indigenous cultures have strong cultural traditions based around elephants, and in these communities, the elephants are generally well respected and treated as part of the family,” the photojournalist explains. “Most owners develop strong lifelong relationships with their elephants and have a strong sense of responsibility and compassion.” 

In the beginning, the transition was difficult. “When the elephants first returned from the tourist camps, there was a bit of human-elephant conflict,” Oswell says. “Of course, you can’t just bring 200 elephants into an area and not have them impact the local community and the local farms. Some elephants died of starvation and malnutrition because they couldn’t get enough food, and others have raided crops and been shot in retaliation or been poisoned by pesticides that are used on cash crops.

“So to avoid these problems, the communities had to quickly think of ways to keep the elephants safely away from the human community. What has happened in some villages is the elephants have been released into areas of land that are managed as community forests. These community-managed lands serve as a space where the elephants can graze naturally on the forest vegetation.” 

In early 2022, Oswell, who is a contributor at We Animals Media, embarked on a journey to document Thailand’s elephants amid the Covid pandemic that halted tourism. During this time, he visited several communities and rescue projects caring for these elephants. The most successful, he says, are the ones that released the elephants into community forests. “These are the projects that really made me realize there is a viable long-term solution for domestic elephants,” he explains. 

“The elephants are far better off in the forest; they can get a better diet through a mix of different types of natural food sources, which leads to better health outcomes, rather than being fed the same thing all the time. And they’re less stressed because they can explore their natural behaviors: for example, they can play in rivers and creeks. 

“So their quality of life is far better. Also, the owners are much better able to care for them in the forests. I noticed young elephants learning to be in their natural forest habitat, learning about different food sources. That is something they could never do in a fully domestic situation.” 

Even as income from the tourist trade dried up, many of these mahouts also took time to reflect–and reimagine a more sustainable future. “A lot of elephant owners have realized that the business model was unsustainable and exploitative and are now developing their own more ethical and sustainable business models,” Oswell continues. “Covid has changed the industry completely.

“If the elephants are properly managed and kept away from crops, people do appreciate having them around because they bring income into the community in the form of tourists staying in the villages in homestays and paying for activities to learn about indigenous culture. At a time when a lot of these communities are suffering from the economic downturn due to the pandemic, it is empowering for them to develop their own independent businesses, while at the same time improving their elephants’ quality of life. So in the long term, it’s looking much better for all.” 

Those changes could have a ripple effect beyond these communities as well. “The elephant camps that operate under the old business model and still offer elephant riding are now a lot more aware that the majority of tourists don’t want to see those practices,” the photographer says. “And they have been so affected by the pandemic that they are now reassessing how they do things.”

Of course, it’s up to tourists to decide what businesses they support. “The best way to effect change is to support ethical and sustainable models and avoid camps that are exploitive and don’t have good business models or the appropriate facilities to care for the elephants,” Oswell stresses. “If tourists just do some simple research before they visit an elephant camp and choose more ethical and sustainable places, then more pressure will be applied on elephant camp owners to change and meet that demand.”

In ten years of covering the elephant tourism industry and the cruelty inflicted at camps like that one on the Cambodian border, Oswell has experienced moments of depression and despair. He’s had to push himself to continue, drawing strength in other people working on behalf of wildlife conservation and animal welfare. This time, he found hope in the community forests, the elephants themselves, and the people who dared to do things differently. 

“I met an ethnic Karen man recently who had lived with a female elephant the same age all his life,” the photojournalist tells me. “He worked and cared for her, and they were inseparable; their love for each other was obvious. They both had similar health problems: sore legs, an aching back, fading eyesight, and bad hearing–all the things we usually suffer from when we get old. I remember watching them walk home together through the village in the evenings. They were very close.”

The post During the Pandemic, Elephants Got a Respite from Abuse. It Should Stay That Way. appeared first on Feature Shoot.