Lawrence Horn: Psychedelic Digital Origami Goes NFT

by Harmon Leon

Photographer Lawrence Horn was born in NYC during the 1940s. He made his mark in the photo world through his psychedelic visuals inspired by the bohemian energy of the East Village, which he moved to in 1967.

Horn, whose background is in academics, first picked up a camera in 1973. The game changer was when he discovered infrared film – the format which he primarily shot on until he packed up his photography gear in 1986. Now, decades later, Horn is launching his first SuperRare NFT drop: The Digital Archive. With some of the Archive already available on OpenSea, the project brings his psychedelic work to the blockchain, bridging analog with digital.

Horn’s NFT drop is due to mere fate; synchronicity if you will – the planets in alignment.

His work was hidden in a storage locker, under lock and key since the mid 80s, and it was only because of a chance encounter that his photography is now being rediscovered after more than 35 years.

But more on that later…

PSYCHEDELIC WITHOUT DRUGS

If you look at Horn’s trippy, color-sprayed photos, it’s hard to believe that the man stopped taking drugs in 1971.

“I had tried psychedelics a few times,” he explains. “I said, ‘I get it. I don’t need being high – it’s counterproductive.’”

Infrared photography became Horn’s drug of choice. The medium allowed him to have psychedelic trips–minus the acid.

“My psychedelic experiences always were focused on nature or outer reality,” Horn says. “I didn’t go inside myself because that was classic archetypal mush. I wanted to find something that I could embody my ideas [with], not just write about them.”

For Horn, infrared is a heightened sensory experience; where energy erupts, and color is intensified and radiates out, capturing the moment a heat wave explodes into light.

Infrared makes part of the invisible spectrum visible.  

“It doesn’t make the cosmic world come into focus, but in terms of a retinal experience, it’s a frequency that we can’t see, but we can feel as heat,” he says. “So, we have a synesthetic experience.”

Horn would interplay his process by utilizing crystal filters to double the images – while the atmosphere at sunset would act as a light filter and create auras, depth, and shades of color. “The third eye allowed me to lock down and understand energy and nature at a more sublime or spiritual level,” he says. The end result: “An engraving of a specific type of energy that is solar and becomes visible through the film.”

INTO THE STORAGE LOCKER

Before dropping the mic on the photography world in 1986, Horn’s final project was capturing the East Village art scene. 

“I had photographed Warhol. I photographed Basquiat. I photographed Keith Haring,” he says. Additionally, Horn photographed Richard Hambleton, a key street artist…