The Fine Art Ledger had the pleasure recently of lunching with Doug Busch, renowned photographer known, particularly, for his large format black and white images.
Doug has exhibited widely and his work is held in many private, corporate and public collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Doug has an incredible eye and while we sat, over lunch, taking in the serenity of the Malibu coast line on a largely overcast day, Doug, using his iphone, effortlessly snapped a black and white image of the water. producing an image there and then which we would happily edition.
As we chatted on Soho Beach House's outside deck, it became apparent that Doug is an artist who works for the pure enjoyment and love of his work. For him, doing what you enjoy, and keeping involved in projects that inspire is the key to a life worth living.
And Doug is no stranger to extraordinary projects. Doug built the camera which produced some of his more iconic pieces. And not any camera. In fact, the world's largest portable camera. Doug has also worked on number of sustainable development projects, including designing and building sustainable houses and landscapes, starting the ecoTECH Design Studio, and completing over thirty projects to date. Doug and his wife, Lori also started the 'No-Strings Foundation', a non-profit awarding monetary grants to up-and-coming photographers in the US.
So it was our pleasure to take Doug out of his busy schedule to discuss changes in the fine art markets, in particularly, the intersection of blockchain and fine art. For any fine art photographer, the prospect of limited digital editions comes loaded with questions about maintaining the integrity of digital 'negatives'. We discussed with Doug how blockchain allows for the preservation of image uniqueness by cryptographically stamping title to an authenticated image, and how, we at The Fine Art Ledger work to secure the negative so that it isn't digitally shared, but at the same time leverage the benefits of blockchain for fine art making fine art more accessible to collectors.
After lunch we headed to Doug's studio in the Malibu Hills where we were fortunate to view select pieces of his work and chatted further about his style and process, particularly for his Silent Waves series. Consisting of open edition color images of the California coast line, we were once again reminded of Doug's marked ability to bring a sense of serenity and vividness to his subjects, washed in color that invites you to enter and sit in stillness with his imagery.
The same sense of quietness and inner peace that we experienced sitting with Doug along-side his coastal canvass.