AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA
Alejandro Cartagena is a photographer who focuses on Latin American urban, labor, and environmental issues through documentary-style landscapes and portraiture. He is most recognized for his outstanding “Car Poolers” series, which features striking, bird’s-eye-view images of Mexican workers commuting to their jobs in pickup trucks. Alejandro is also the founder of SuperRare’s most successful Spaces, Fellowship Gallery. Fellowship’s mission is to elevate photography by presenting new ways to discover, collect and learn about the medium through NFTs from marquee estates, living artists, and emerging talent. In this interview, Alejandro recounts how Fellowship was founded, the principles it is built on, and the community behind its acclaim.
Linda Dounia: Let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell me a little bit about Fellowship and why you chose to build it in web3?
Alejandro Cartagena: Fellowship first started as a collection. Our main focus was collecting photo NFTs, but we saw a big gap in what was being offered in web3. I have 15 years of experience in the traditional art market, with a network of artists that I admire and whose work, I believe, has transformed what photography is today. So I wanted to see if there was a possibility for these artists, who are not web3 natives, to integrate the space. It was relatively easy because their work is digital so they quickly understood the concept of digital assets. We started reaching out to artists that we felt had built communities through their years of practice, publishing endeavors, and teaching experience. We shared with them Fellowship’s collecting philosophy and they were very enthusiastic about being a part of it. Through this, we saw the possibility to expand beyond collecting because we realized that web3 gave us the tools to become brokers, dealers, and even gallerists. We were confident that the artists we had already been collecting from would help us move in this new direction. So we started a new branch of Fellowship responsible for supporting artists in finding new collectors in web3. SuperRare Spaces were a great fit for it.
LD: What kind of support did you give artists you were onboarding? What type of information about web3 did you find yourself sharing?
AC: We shared guides, compiled educational articles, but mainly, we had a lot of one-on-one conversations to dive deep into what web3 is from a technological standpoint. For example, we would focus on how web3 can support a photography practice. The artists we worked with had established careers and would typically have large inventories of physical or digital works. It was about finding the correct language to translate to them how NFTs could help them deal with their inventory and open up a new market for it. I had gone through this journey myself as a photographer coming into web3. So I felt very committed that whoever we were onboarding had as much knowledge as possible to not make the same mistakes I had made joining the space. One of my co-founders is a collector and the other is a gallerist. They also shared their perspectives on web3 with artists we onboarded. We tried to give them a balanced outlook and answered questions like: What are the best practices to protect your work? What do collectors expect from artists? What type of image quality should they mint? What metadata should they add? It took us about six months to build the whole program.
LD: How was your experience of the Space Race? What did you learn from it?
AC: I don’t think we had any real leverage or special contacts in web3, so we did our research and built the plane as we were flying it. First, we worked on a very thorough proposal. We already had agreements with the artists that we wanted to launch the Space with. We then started a campaign to gather support for our proposal by cold-calling collectors. We got no feedback from the majority of people we contacted but the ones who did respond were very enthusiastic about our proposal. We were really devoted to those we heard back from, answering any questions they might have about us or the artists we worked with. One thing I learned is to not feel discouraged. When you can't connect, you just push forward. So we reached out over and over again until we found a good number of people who were willing to support us. Still, I think we barely got in.
LD: I am very glad it worked out in the end. There's so much tension and anticipation around the Space Race, but you’re the prime example that the Space Race can lead to finding true supporters and fans of a project. Your success beyond the Space Race is undeniable. What do you think contributed to it?
AC: We didn’t have the illusion that opening a SuperRare Space would automatically bring collectors. We didn’t put all our eggs in the same basket. We knew from the beginning that it was all about building relationships with collectors. So as we waited for the Space Race results, we set up a website to show what we were gonna do as an organization. We shared the website in one-on-one conversations with collectors, and gathered sales commitments for about 3 months. By the time the results came in, we pre-sold a number of pieces. We were lucky that the collectors for those pieces were patient and waited with us while we built our Space.
LD: That’s a smart tactic. So to understand you clearly, collectors would express interest to buy a piece from your website, but wouldn't buy it yet. And then just wait until it's minted to acquire it. Who were those collectors?
AC: They were mainly web3 native collectors, but a few came from our network in the traditional art world. We curated a collection of top quality, so I think collectors understood that the pieces they were committing to were unique. It took us 6 months to build our first roster of artists with a track record in the traditional art world and works in important collections and museums around the world. Collectors were aware that the works we presented would be gone in no time if they missed out. I think our success comes down to what we offer – a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire important works.
LD: Do you have to do some collector education around understanding how important these works are?
AC: Yes, absolutely. We dig deep into each of the artists we work with and create packages that we present to collectors – what informs their aesthetic, who’s written about them, whose collected from them, which institutions have they worked with, which collections are their works part of. It’s a lot of work, but it lets you sleep at night because you know you’re bringing context to what you are offering. We are used to doing this in the traditional art world, so we wanted to bring this practice to web3. This is how we approach creating value for a new type of asset – researching artists and gathering context in a rigorous way to share with collectors. We combine our experience in the traditional art world and what web3 has to offer to build a healthy space for everyone we work with.
LD: I am interested in your curatorial practice. How do you go about finding artists you want to work with?
AC: Curiosity. We have a team of curators who are constantly following artists in web3 and beyond, keeping up with their projects. Then, we take our time to see how these artists might fit into the Fellowship philosophy and help us build on it. We thoroughly believe in people who are getting their first change in the art world through NFTs and we also pay reverence to those who have established practices outside of web3. So our roster of artists is diverse, spanning from artists building in web3, those working in the traditional art world, and even those who are no longer with us. For the longest time, photography has always been on the sidelines of the art market and art in general. So our guiding light, which is to elevate photography as one of the most important art forms of the 21st century, is ultimately the deciding factor.
LD: With that in mind, how do you go about accompanying the artists you choose to work with?
AC: We believe that artists need to be artists. Being an artist myself and having been on the business side as well, I have realized that artists need space and time to produce their work. That means time to experiment and mess around in the studio. The conundrum in web3 right now though is that artists have the opportunity to do everything on their own, connecting with collectors, promoting their projects, etc. That agency is one of the reasons I chose to stay in web3, but I also realize it’s hard to manage all that. Some artists may be great marketers as well as great artists, and know how to manage their time effectively to promote themselves and produce. The reality is that most artists are only interested in making art. So when an artist decides to build with us in web3, we are there for them. We can be the face for their work, socializing it with collectors, and handle the storytelling. If an artist feels more comfortable being their own spokesperson, we respect that too and collaborate with them.
LD: The way Fellowship engages with the relationship between web3 and the traditional art world is interesting. On one hand, you’re educating web3 about photography, and at the same time, using it to challenge how it's valued by the traditional art market.
AC: There is no other way. You have to be thorough in understanding that web3 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, isolated from the art market. There is a relationship between these spaces, and I think successful organizations in web3 understand that. It’s not about fighting what came before. To me, it’s about learning from what’s been done before in the traditional art world, shaking off what didn’t serve artists and bringing what does to this new world that is web3.
LD: Listening to you so far, it’s evident that there are a few things that contribute to your success – from the care you place in reaching out to collectors and educating them about the value of photography, to informing that value by thoroughly researching artists and building context around their practice. You bring works to collectors’ awareness and allow them to fall in love with them from an aesthetic and contextual standpoint. Is there anything else you would attribute your success to?
AC: Amazing art. We go out scouting for artists who we feel transform photography through their projects, through their ideas, through the aesthetics through the way they talk about the medium. We went for the best, and the proof is in the pudding. We work with artists who push their practice and venture into what’s never been done before. We are about to launch a new selection of artists working with AI for example, and explore how it relates to photography. A lot of these artists are web3 native and have empowering voices that we think will shake what we thought photography was.
LD: It seems that having a very clear idea of who you are as an institution and what you stand for has allowed you to build a strong community around Fellowship. With that in mind, I wonder what other recommendations you might have for people looking to launch a new Space.
AC: I would say take it slow. It can sometimes feel like you have to rush into making decisions and that there is a small window of time to find success. But the reality is that it takes time to build something thoughtful that people will trust and resonate with. We started slowly and gradually scaled up to meet our ambitions, and that worked for us. So I would recommend working to the scale you can manage. In this space, I think it’s better to under-promise and over-deliver.
Click here to view the Fellowship Gallery Space.