I’m a Square, 2021

24 Unique works, 1024x1024 pixels, PNG
All digital 1/1s can be collected as NFTs on OpenSea.

I’m a Square is a conceptual series of 24 digital self-portraits that explores identity, ownership, and value in the context of image culture and blockchain technology. Each square is a meditation on what it means to be seen, quantified, and collected.

The works are priced according to a poetic algorithm — the square root of their pixel count in Ethereum — assigning literal value to form. While each image depicts the artist, they also act as placeholders for larger questions:
Who owns a face? What makes an image valuable? And how does identity change when it becomes a token?

Collectors are not just acquiring a portrait — they are entering into a symbolic contract. Each square carries a latent logic, waiting to be activated. In time, this logic will turn inward. What was once image becomes mirror. What was owned begins to respond. The project folds into itself — a system of reflection, inheritance, and quiet transformation.

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The portrait in which this series is based off of is a photograph of the artist taken in 2019 to represent Southworth for his professional work as a Senior Photo Retoucher in the advertising industry. The artist was tasked with retouching his own likeness for the company’s website; which is an oddly metaphysical experience to zoom in one’s face and stamp out ‘imperfections’.

This image became significant for a number of reasons to Southworth. One of which is it was a portrait of the artist as he was turning 40 years old. In a dark turn, it became the last professional photograph of Southworth before getting skin cancer on his face for which he later had surgery to remove.

Southworth wanted to truly own this ‘last image’ of himself and he contacted the photographer to obtain copyright. He will be making multiple bodies of work from the portrait that investigate ideas of artist identity and value in relation to blockchain technology.

The originating price of each work is the square root of the pixel count in Ethereum.
For example: #2 = 1.41 ETH, #7 = 2.64 ETH, #15 = 3.87 ETH and so forth.
The only exception is #24 which is Southworth’s current PFP for social media. This work has been priced at 42 ETH.

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ERC-1155 Non-Fungible Tokens on Ethereum.
PNGs and metadata are stored on IPFS.
Image dimensions are 1024 x 1024 pixels.