Artist Highlight : Celil Bezeng

What if photography wasn’t just about the final image? what if the process was the art? These are the questions Celil (@Celil_Bezeng) asks in their work. Celil’s project, CONTACT SHEETs, is a tribute to the lost art of selection in photography, raw, unfiltered, and deeply intentional.

Contact Sheets

CONTACT SHEETs takes inspiration from an analog-era ritual, when photographers reviewed negatives before selecting final prints. Each contact sheet held scribbled notes, dates, settings, mistakes, insights. a tangible record of the creative process.

But in the digital age, that process has faded. Instant editing replaced slow, deliberate selection. With CONTACT SHEETs, Celil reclaims that lost art presenting his photos raw, with EXIF data and handwritten notes intact. This goes back to where Celil’s journey started; in the darkroom. As a teenager, he watched blank photo paper transform into images an alchemy that shaped his lifelong passion. From analog film to digital NFTs, his work has always been about documenting real life.

This project isn’t just nostalgia it’s a statement. A challenge to how we consume photography today. A bridge between old-world craft and web3’s digital frontier. A collection where every frame carries history. Web3 unlocked new creative possibilities for Celil.

Yet, street photography remains underappreciated in NFTs, still he pushes forward documenting the real, the unscripted, the moments we often overlook.

So what's next? A new CONTACT SHEETs album is on the way.

but that’s not all, Celil plans to print it as a photo book bringing his web3 project full circle, from analogue inspiration to digital minting and back to print.

A collector’s piece, in every sense.

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You can find out more about Celils work on their Linktree and view their available work on their Exchange Art profile