Pereira’s photograph shows Madrid’s Gran Vía Street, empty. The NFT of the picture will appear on OpenSea through the Foundation.app platform.
The photograph of William José Returns Home, made by the Spanish photographer, Ignacio Pereira, was uploaded to the NFT, OpenSea market on April 7. The image will be the first NFT (non-fungible token) sold by Pereira, which made it on January 21, 2019. The picture shows the street of Gran Vía (the busiest street in Madrid) in total isolation.
According to the digital newspaper El Independiente, the photograph received its tokenization on sale as an NFT. It went viral during 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, taking a different reading from the one it had in 2019 when it represented loneliness in big cities.
During the pandemic, the photograph went through an edition procedure from the Spanish political party, Vox, which manipulated the image and filled the streets within the picture with coffins.
The original photograph of Pereira in the form of NFT will go through auction today, Thursday, April 15, in the OpenSea market, through the NFT platform, Foundation. App (FND), who has also auctioned works such as Kendama Warrior, for 7.70 ETH (at the time of sale USD 18,858), or the piece Fractal Istanbul – Ferryboat – Harem, by illustrator and CGI artist Tarik Tolunay, which sold for 5 ETH (for the time of sale USD 12,252).
Foundation. App currently has an NFT created by Edward Snowden, which until now has not found its sale.
NFTs had gained a lot of criticism in the art world
Regarding the NFTs, Pereira expressed exclusively for El Independiente that this digital asset will turn the art world “upside-down” since it positions artists in a place where they can generate their currency. Pereira also said that in the end, the NFTs would serve as a tool for the discipline of photography to recover its dignity, a struggle that takes years.
Ignacio Pereira, born in 1979, began his role as a photographer in 2005 after having projects for various communication and advertising agencies in Spain.
That same year he founded his agency, Coronal Truman, which dedicates its efforts to deliver multimedia content. In 2018, Pereira was awarded the Photo España award for his project Kenopsia.
Like William José Returns Home, most of Pereira’s photographs represent loneliness in the world’s capitals. Pereira has photographed isolated cities like London, Tokyo, New York, Istanbul, Rome, Paris, and Madrid.
The world of NFTs extends its tentacles every day, not only with the sale of digital works such as CryptoPunks but also with the tokenization of traditional works such as the 10,000 oil paintings by Damien Hirst.
These works are at an eco-friendly platform and artist Beeple’s collage, which found a successful sale last month for $ 70 million at Christie’s auction house.
By: Jenson Nuñez
