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In this episode of Unlocked, we speak with Mexican photographer and artist Alejandro Cartagena about the evolution of photography, from analog to digital and now into the age of artificial intelligence. Drawing on over two decades of practice, he reflects on the city as a force shaping identity, the role of archives and reproduction, and why AI marks a critical moment of transformation rather than the death of the medium. We also discuss Fellowship, the platform he co-founded to rethink photography, digital art, and collecting.
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Alejandro Cartagena understood NFTs immediately - not as a financial instrument but as something a photographer had been waiting for. "A digital original of a digital object on the Internet." The epicentre of all the circulation value, cultural value, emotional value, and conceptual value that a photograph accumulates as it moves through the world. Twenty-one years of practice and twenty-seven books later, he co-founded Fellowship gallery to make sure that understanding reached other artists too.
Alejandro Cartagena is a Mexican photographer with twenty-one years of practice, twenty-seven published books, and a mid-career retrospective at SFMOMA that subsequently travelled to Mapfre Madrid. He understood NFTs in 2021 as a structural breakthrough for photography specifically - a way to create digital originals in a medium that had never been able to claim them. He co-founded Fellowship gallery in late 2021 with Neil, building a roster that includes Harold Cohen, Elman Mansimov, Marius Klingerman, Gene Kogan, Trevor Paglen, Holly Herndon, Matt Dryhurst, and ThankyouX.
The NFT moment meant something specific to photography that it meant differently to other digital art forms. For a medium whose economics had been built on prints and editions, the concept of a digital original was genuinely transformative: a way to claim for a digital photograph the same singular status that a painting or sculpture had always held. Alejandro Cartagena's account of his own realisation - and the Fellowship gallery he built to extend that realisation to other photographers and digital artists - is the most articulate available. This conversation also explores what mid-career institutional recognition looks like, what Fellowship is trying to build, and which artists he is currently watching most closely.
The digital original for photography
Photography had always existed in a strange relationship to originality - any print could theoretically be duplicated, and the edition was the primary mechanism for creating scarcity. The NFT created something different: a verifiable digital original that is singular in a structural, not just conventional, sense.
Fellowship gallery and artist community
Fellowship is not just a gallery - it's a proposition about what artist community looks like when it's built by practitioners for practitioners. The roster reflects Cartagena's specific understanding of who is doing important work at the intersection of photography, code, and digital art.
SFMOMA retrospective and institutional recognition
A mid-career retrospective at SFMOMA is one of the most significant forms of institutional recognition available to a living photographer. That recognition gives Cartagena's account of the NFT transition particular weight - he is not someone who needed a new market, but someone who found something genuinely new.
Artists watching: Sine and Barbara Asheeda
Cartagena's attention to Sine (dance/design, early digital spaces) and Barbara Asheeda (AI video) reflects a collector's eye for work that is developing in front of us - not already established but building toward something significant.
"An NFT is a digital original of a digital object on the Internet... the epicenter of all that circulation value, all that cultural value, emotional value, conceptual value that has been shared."
Photography is one of the richest and most complex categories in digital collecting - and it's the one where the NFT's structural implications are clearest. Alejandro Cartagena's account of what a digital original means for a photographer is the most precise articulation of the concept available. If you collect photography, digital or physical, this conversation will change how you think about what you own.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
