Iconic French Magazine Paris Match Auctioning Historic Photos via Ethereum NFTs

By Sander Lutz

Paris Match, the French magazine world-renowned 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 begin at 0.3 ETH, a sum worth about $1,062 at writing. 

Paris Match photos selected for today’s sale include those featuring such cultural icons as The Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson, Orson Welles, and John Travolta, as well as news reports on the Berlin Wall, Harlem, and the Tour de France. 

"John Travolta chez lui aux Etats-Unis," 1980. Credit: Jean-Claude Sauer, Paris Match Archives

For the auction, Paris Match has partnered with photo NFT platform Focus Bloc and SuperRare, the NFT marketplace. Today’s sale marks the magazine’s second foray into NFTs, after a January 2023 sale of 120 one-of-ones. 

Emmanuel Daien, Focus Bloc’s founder, also aided Paris Match in the magazine’s debut NFT sale last year. He told Decrypt's SCENE that during that initial sale, he observed an interesting mix of traditional photo collectors and crypto-native NFT enthusiasts jockeying to own pieces of the magazine’s history. 

"Rendez-vous avec Jack Nicholson a Paris," 1974. Credit: Jack Garofalo, Paris Match Archives

This time around, Daien said, the magazine has opted for an auction format, instead of a fixed price sale. It has also introduced a physical element to the NFTs, with prints accompanying the digital files—perhaps a nod to the sale’s expected success among traditional photo collectors. 

Owners of Paris Match NFTs will receive full digital license rights to photos they hold. Paris Match will retain all other rights associated with the images.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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