Ethereum
Iconic French magazine Paris Match auctions historic photos via Ethereum NFT
Paris Match, the French magazine known worldwide for its photojournalism, announced Monday that it will auction a series of archival photos as NFTs to commemorate the publication’s 75th anniversary.
The auction, which begins today, will feature 75 Ethereum NFTs of iconic photos from the Paris Match archives. The digital files will also come with numbered and signed physical prints of the same images. Starting bids for each photo will start at 0.3 ETH, an amount worth approximately $1,062 to writing.
Paris Match photos selected for today’s sale include those depicting cultural icons such as the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson, Orson Welles and John Travolta, as well as features on the Berlin Wall, Harlem and the Tour de France.
“John Travolta at home in the United States”, 1980. Credit: Jean-Claude Sauer, Paris Match Archives
For the auctions, Paris Match partnered with the NFT photo platform Focus block And Super rare, the NFT marketplace. Today’s sale marks the magazine’s second foray into NFTs, following a sale of 120 copies in January 2023.
Emmanuel Daien, founder of Focus Bloc, also helped Paris Match with the magazine’s first NFT sale last year. He said DecryptSCENE that during this initial sale, he observed an interesting mix of traditional photo collectors and crypto-native NFT enthusiasts vying to own pieces of the magazine’s history.
“Meeting with Jack Nicholson in Paris”, 1974. Credit: Jack Garofalo, Paris Match Archives
This time around, Daien said, the magazine opted for an auction format, instead of a fixed-price sale. It also introduced a physical element to NFTs, with prints accompanying digital files, perhaps a nod to the sale’s expected success among traditional photo collectors.
Paris Match NFT owners will receive full digital licensing rights to the photos they own. Paris Match will retain all other rights attached to the images.
Edited by Andrew Hayward