Delayed Rays of a Star

The Historic August Sander NFT Drop

The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. Roland Barthes, “Camera Lucida”

Detail

An important inflection point in the history of the photographic medium occurred this week with Fellowship Trust’s drop of 10k+ NFTs constituting the entire body of photographic contact sheets from the highly respected August Sander Archive. In the continuing unfolding of art and NFTs there are many aspects of this historic event worth considering but I want to home in here on just a couple.

August Sander, like every human got, as far as we can know, only one existence. He lived for a specific duration (88 years) in a particular span in the flow of time (1876-1964). In his allotted time he used his camera, materials, energy and gifts to bring into being a large, excellent and ultimately finite number of extraordinary photographs. There are 10,400 contact prints from carefully preserved glass plate negatives in his important archive and many more other prints and documents of course.

His personal story outside of his accomplishments and importance in the photographic field is extraordinary. Like so many millions who were pursued, persecuted and murdered during the terrible years leading up to and during WWII, August Sander struggled to keep his family, himself and his work intact. Remarkably, in 1946 he lost between 25,000 to 30,000 glass plate negatives in a fire. This tragedy stings more because he had somehow managed to preserve these through the war times. So the drop of 10,400 photographs from the archive this week was actually only a fractional amount of what Sander in fact created in his lifetime.

To their great credit, August Sander’s son, Gunther, his grandson, Gerd, and now his great- grandson Julian Sander have each in their turn built upon his legacy. Through careful conservation, research and institutional collaborations they have now achieved a level of sustainability and potential future growth for the archive and the knowledge base that these photographs contain. Thus Sander’s accomplishment and the value rendered by his life will very likely carry forward into the indefinite future. Why then would such a well established and important archive choose to release NFTs of the entire contact sheet catalog at an offering price of ....”free” …? Those who brush off the NFT phenomenon as just another “cash grab” may want to pause here. Not that economics are not in play - of course they are always - but is this really just a cash grab? There are a number of non-economic drivers but I want to discuss just one.

In his excellent essay posted on the Fellowship Trust site Julian Sander says: “I am adding each person who claims an NFT from this collection to the list of stewards of August Sander’s work.” This expresses I think the primary driver. This bold and brave action that the archive has undertaken insures that the legacy of August Sander will endure as long as humanity has the capacity to power and access a digital network. The NFT’s were snapped up in less than a few hours. Every person who participated in this historic drop by minting, claiming and now owning an NFT from that archive is forevermore a part of August Sander’s work, the archive and his legacy. And this now decentralized cast of stewards will, because it is in their interest to do so, maintain and to some degree extend the meaning and value of the photograph in its tokenized expression that is now in their possession. It is both an asset and a responsibility. The blockchain will record faithfully the provenance and ownership-stewardship chain of each NFT going forward.

I have to pause here and ask - will “right click copy save” or your printed jpg grab do that? It will certainly emanate that photograph’s moment for you wonderfully, powerfully onscreen or off. And we’re so fortunate to have these many and varied ownerless, public expressions of the work - online, in books, at the museums and elsewhere. But, that sense of responsibility and participation that comes from collecting and being, even in a small way, a steward and patron of an artist, an archive and a body of work you revere is activated from acquiring an artist’s creation - even in the form of an NFT. It lands just as sweetly, at least for me, as acquiring a physical print. I stopped collecting photographic prints when I ran out of wall space and the resources to properly maintain prints in other settings than my home. I have never collected for investment but from passion and love. I love my August Sander NFT as much as I love my Stephen Shore print. My feeling for them is different and in most respects equivalent. And one of them I don’t worry about losing in a fire or flood.

Obviously human nature evolves slowly and many of the owner-stewards on Thursday, at the time of the drop, were cash grabbers in the game to score and flip their newly minted NFTs for a quick buck. And there’s nothing wrong with that - more power to them. That’s how our species rolls - “baby needs a new pair of shoes”. Aren’t we all, at some level, sometimes reaching for cash? But, little by little, in the secondary market and through trades (trading was happening even before the NFT’s were revealed) the NFT’s will find their way into hands that value what they are holding and stewarding and will take measures to protect and hold the treasure that they appreciate. As of this writing, OpenSea the large trading platform where most of the trading occurs shows that the volume of trading in just a few short days involved over 300 eth. An ether’s dollar exchange rate today places the value of that exchange at around $900,000 since the time of the drop. Under the smart contract securing these NFTs the creators of the NFTs will realize 10% of the trade value or as of this writing $90,000. So, yes, as with all things big ART money is involved. There is a lot more to say about that, and I am saying here that economics is not for me the most interesting aspect of this development.

I am fortunate to have children who share my passion for art and the creative side of our lives. Some of us became excited about NFTs and teamed up to participate in the 10k drop. While the NFT’s were free there is a transactional cost to mint them that goes in this case to Ethereum. At the time we minted ours that cost (“gas”) was about $75. As we know from other tech advances over the years there is always an early phase where the ins and outs of the space are a bit clunky and we users are a bit unsure and don’t have our sea legs yet. But, all in all the process of minting an August Sander NFT was a lot easier than my first modem install. Do you remember or have you heard what a modem “handshake” was?

Once we got through the process of minting our NFT’s we had another lap to go. The photograph the token contained was not revealed until many hours later. When it was finally apparent what we had minted it felt like an epiphany. There was our subject, our photograph, our August Sander instant emanating out “like the delayed rays of a star”. And those NFT rays are now ours. They are our responsibility. They are our’s to use, abuse, destroy, conserve, lose, preserve, extend or be with and share as we choose. Each of these digital objects exist in this particular blockchain manifestation only as an NFT. Perhaps we should and perhaps someday we will evolve beyond taking interest in and finding joy in the having of things. Most of us are not there yet. It takes quite a Zen master not to shed a tear over a broken favorite rice bowl. He may spend a lifetime trying to get to that place and never fully arrive. So, for now, be happy that with ownership of art comes the opportunity to be responsible for it and find the pleasure of having and supporting a work of art and artist even in (especially in) the form of a token.

Detail from an August Sander NFT

A tokenized photograph is simply another form of expression, albeit a unique expression, of that original instant that August Sander tripped the shutter and the emanation was created. The economic and market questions aside, and there are many and quite interesting, the 10k Sander drop is like the creation of a new realm of existence and energy for the archive that Sander created.

This NFT archive will beam forth going forward through the ages in ways that cannot be anticipated and may well exceed what Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, MOMA, The Getty, and many other institutions may be able to achieve in terms of stewardship and conservation. Despite their depth of resources, talent and vision it may be that mere decentralized humanity will outshine all those fine institutions. Certainly mere humanity has outshined and outlasted all the fallen civilizations and nation states for thousands of years. Put the graven papyrus in the hands of the people in blockchain form and let us see what will happen 10,000 years from now.

This drop takes crowdsourcing and its power to a new level and depth. It remains to be seen whether and how the vision and possibilities that Julian Sander, the August Sander Archive and the Fellowship Trust have brought forth will be fully realized. But, there is no doubt that they have turned the page of photography’s history and commenced a new chapter. And of course all the infrastructure that was photography last week and the years before remain and will flourish. And of course it is the nature of disruption that all elements of photography as we have known recently will flourish with a different valence and meaning than before.

As August Sander experienced first hand and the world learns over and over again, nations fail, institutions stumble and fall, basements and the negatives they contain go up in flames or floods. But humanity writ large, at least thus far, continues to take its art and objects and material clap-trap forward imperfectly but by hook or by crook. And it especially drags along all of that which is understood, loved and valued into generation after generation. Supported by the power of the blockchain there is reason to hope that the August Sander Archive will live on, evolve powerfully as it is enriched and sustained through the millennia by the very humanity that August Sander cherished and sought to observe, embrace, explore and lift up with his photography. That just feels good to me somehow right now.

photos by August Sander from “August Sander” book by Benedickt Taschen Verlag unless otherwise noted