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Laura Splan was photographed by Danielle Ezzo in Brooklyn, New York for Obscura's Who We Are Project presented in the Vellum LA X Obscura: ‘WHO WE ARE’ Outdoor Billboard Exhibition.
Who We Are on Opensea
Vellum LA X Obscura: ‘WHO WE ARE’ Outdoor Billboard Exhibition
3rd & Mariposa
Los Angeles, CA
1/27/2022 - 2/10/2022
Curated by Sinziana Velicescu for Vellum LA
WHO WE ARE is the first grant given by Obscura via PaisanoDAO, distributing $100,000 to 100 photographers across the globe. The aim of WHO WE ARE is to document humans who are participating, building, and creating in Web3 and the NFT space in 2021, the year NFTs took the world by storm. The project has encompassed 33 countries and over 175 people so far, and will be ongoing, continuing perpetually with Obscura as it grows over time.
Vellum LA is pleased to announce a two week pop-up billboard exhibition across Los Angeles featuring 50 portraits by 42 photographers of and by influential community members within the NFT space.
Curated by Sinziana Velicescu, Obscura ‘Who We Are’ will be displayed on StandardVision’s LED billboards around Los Angeles from 1/27/2022 - 2/10/2022.
Obscura ‘Who We Are’ was created with a $100,000 grant from Paisano DAO. 100 photographers were granted $1,000 each to create the first-ever worldwide NFT community portrait project. These photographic portraits by a global group of photographers working in the NFT space document the diverse faces and stories of creators, collectors, and members of the new web3 metaverse.
The NFT community is often represented by cartoon avatars. WHO WE ARE seeks to show the real people behind the avatars, and each individual portrait tells its own unique story of how web3 is changing lives and creating new opportunities. The artists involved thrive creatively in their respective countries, share their creative visions, and collectively build a new, diverse, and truly global creative community. The project currently encompasses 6 continents, 33 countries, 93 cities, and over 220 portrait subjects so far, and will be an ongoing project with Obscura as it grows over time.
Obscura was created to fund fine art photographers and set free their creative possibilities. Many photographic stories are left untold for lack of funding. This platform is an opportunity to bring back the photographic commission and to support photographers pursuing their projects through the sales of their NFTs.
This outdoor exhibition with Vellum LA is the second iteration of Obscura Who We Are, and the first physical exhibition of 50 of the portraits minted as Non Fungible Tokens on an Obscura custom smart contract listed for sale on OpenSea.io. The first iteration of the Obscura Who We Are project was launched in early January, 2022 on the NFT platform Foundation.app to showcase the first 200 images from WHO WE ARE. Photographers who participated in the grant have an opportunity to generate NFT sales from the work they’ve produced. Artists will receive 80% of the sales proceeds, with 20% going to the Obscura platform to continue to help photographers tell their stories.
