The world’s first NFT Photo Contest, held in Istanbul, brought together the leading names of the art, photography and technology world at Hilton Istanbul Bosphorus. This event, organized under the name Awards Photos, was realized with the support of Bybit and the contributions of FIAP and Eurasia, using Seed.Photo and ByBit infrastructure. Although the competition was held for the first time in Turkey, it achieved great success by bringing together photographers from all over the world.
Prominent winners and categories of the competition
The competition was organized in 6 different categories: creative concept, human, nature, light color, light monochrome and travel. In each category, works carefully selected by the jury were awarded. Elina Garipova won the first prize in the Creative Concept category, Mehdi Nağaşzade in the Human category, Ovi Pop in the Light Color category, Rüstem Rakimov in the Light Monochrome category and Jie Fischer in the Travel category. The winners were presented with their awards by leading names in the industry.
Awards Photos Turkey Ambassador İlter Yılmaz stated that Istanbul has a unique position in terms of international events and congress tourism, and emphasized that NFT technology offers new income sources and work protection opportunities in the art world. Yılmaz stated that the purpose of the event is to raise awareness by spreading NFT photography to wider audiences.
The event also witnessed important discussions on the future of artificial intelligence-supported photography and the direction of digital art. Seed.Photo Founding Partner Ashkan Alex Atashkar expressed the place of artificial intelligence in the art world and the solutions offered by blockchain technology against work theft. Atashkar stated that blockchain and NFT brought the art of photography to a new era and protected the uniqueness of the works.