For decades, the Ocean Beach Pier reached nearly a third of a mile into the Pacific — the longest concrete pier on the West Coast, and one of San Diego's most beloved landmarks. Generations fished from it, watched the sun drop into the water from it, fell in love on it. Then the ocean won. Storm after storm broke it down until it was condemned, and now it's coming down for good.
I photographed its light the way I see it — the luminism that lives in that particular meeting of sun, salt, and concrete. But a photograph felt like it wasn't enough for a place this loved. So I did something that had never been done.
On March 23, 2023, I made the O.B. Pier permanent. I salvaged wood from the pier's own storm damage and built it into frames and objects — and in my studio at Photo-Synthesis, I fabricated a pentaptych: five panels of that captured light, floating above an actual post reclaimed from the pier itself. Then I made it the world's first Real World Inscription — a physical work of art whose authenticity and origin are recorded forever on the blockchain, impossible to forge, impossible to erase, verifiable by anyone, owned outright with no gallery's or institution's permission required.
A piece of a condemned landmark, made immortal.
I sold that pentaptych at the Ocean Beach Chili Cook-Off Street Fair this past June — in person, for cash, to a collector who loved it on sight and never gave a thought to what made it technically unprecedented. And that's the truth of this work: you don't have to understand the blockchain to feel it in real life. The innovation isn't why you fall for the piece. It's why, once it's yours, it stays real forever.
The pier is coming down. The light — and your claim to it — doesn't have to.
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