Psychedelic Pioneers

#PsychedelicPioneers

Dean Chamberlain opens our eyes to the idea that the use of light within photography doesn’t merely have to stand as a mundane relationship with the material world but, instead, an agent to suspend matter within a gripping grasp of wibbly wobbly time. When viewing Dean’s work we are left pondering the permanence of what we see. We consider time, space and reality as we navigate our gaze across his bright, magical, mark-making. Dean Chamberlain uses a camera, not to photograph, but instead, as a tool to encapsulate the medium of light.

Dean has devoted more than 50 years towards evolving his mastery of light and now is appropriately crowned the father of light painting photography. Since solidifying his command of photons, Dean has shot the likes of David Bowie and directed classic music videos including ‘All She Wants is’ by Duran Duran and ‘This One’ by Paul McCartney. Now, he blesses the blockchain with his free spirit, presenting ‘Psychedelic Pioneers’, a curated collection of both portraits and still life, each admirably demonstrating his profound captivation of wavelengths.

“…as long as he moves quickly… he won’t be seen. He’s like a phantom.” – Paul McCartney

Tapping into the zeitgeist of the psychedelic movement in the 60s and 70s, each of the 24 photographs work to illuminate the stories of the pioneers behind the portraits whilst in turn introducing the world to the birth of his native light painting genre. Trippy and colourful, the mind-altering world of psychedelics represented in this work is more akin to a trip rather than a sober state as we re-evaluate what it means to see.

“To me it’s more like painting than photographing. Because the lighting I do is applied directly by me to people/surfaces or objects or whatever in an impressionistic kind of way. Any colour you can imagine, any tonality, any feeling you can come up with, you can actually turn that into light, as a painter would do with paint.”

This collection has been carefully curated but the Fahey Klein Gallery who proudly represent Dean’s work.

These humble yet hallucinatory photographs are available as exclusive NFT editions of six.

Buy your #PsychedelicPioneers here.

#PsychedelicPioneers Drop timeline

Greenlist: CLOSED

Presale: CLOSED

Public Sale: OPEN

About Dean Chamberlain

Chamberlain served as Artist in Residence at Dartmouth College in 1989. In 1994 his work appeared in Nervous Landscapes, a book which accompanied an exhibition at the Southeast Museum of Photography. He co-founded the Light Space Gallery in Venice, California in 2001, and serves as its co-director. Since 2003 Chamberlain has been a contributor to Mao Mag, an insiders’ art and fashion magazine.

He has taken art photographs of people from many walks of life. A “Psychedelic Pioneers” series of limited edition prints included portraits of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Albert Hofmann, Laura Huxley, Alexander Shulgin, Rick Doblin, Oscar Janiger, Stan Grof, Terence McKenna, and John C. Lilly. A selection from this series has been curated for this drop by the Fahey Klein Gallery who represents Dean’s work in Venice, Los Angeles.

Another series documented artists like Keith Haring and Jeff Koons. He has also created portraits for musicians such as David Bowie, Duran Duran, Debbie Harry, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Arcadia, Roy Orbison, and directed music videos using the same long exposure techniques: “This One” for Paul and Linda McCartney, “Missing” for Arcadia and “All She Wants Is” for Duran Duran. “All She Wants Is” won an MTV Video Music Award for innovation.

Chamberlain was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He first became interested in photography when he was thirteen using a Polaroid camera, and by fifteen had acquired his first Konica. He had always wanted to be an artist and was inspired by his grandmother who encouraged him to paint on canvas. He attended Sheridan College and Rochester Institute of Technology and by his early twenties he knew he was a light painter, and has focused on this technique ever since. He was very interested in the psychedelic movement, and became a friend to Timothy Leary late in his life. In 2003 his gallery put on a showing of art and memorabilia that Chamberlain selected from Leary’s archives after his death.

Community and drop information

#PsychedelicPioneers public sale is now OPEN.

Find the full collection now proudly minted onto the blockchain, presented as ⅙ editions from a current floor price of 0.11 ETH here (as each edition sells, the price of the remaining pieces will increase).

Public drop, in official partnership with Opensea is now live.

There are just 24 pieces in the collection altogether each presented as 1/6 editions.

Join the dedicated #PsychedelicPioneers discord channel to discuss the collection.

Collection partner

This collection will be dropped in official partnership with the Opensea Marketplace

Psychedelic Pioneers: #PSYCHEDELICPIONEERS

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