Don’t have $500 to spend on art? Try a fine art poster

If you want to buy a poster, there are plenty of places to source one online. If you want to buy art, that’s a slightly trickier (and more expensive) proposition. Nava is a new platform that’s aiming to combine the two mediums by printing open edition fine art posters that won’t cost you a month’s rent.

A team of curators started the service as an alternative to buying expensive prints. They gathered 20 photographers including Amy Harrity, Jiro Konami, and Tim Barber, whose work Nava can offer at $40 a pop instead of upwards of $500 (the artists get half of every sale).

Nava

Nava

How does this work exactly? Nava’s founders explain that a poster is inherently different than a fine art print. Typically, fine art prints are rendered in a dark room or on a pigment ink jet printer. They’re printed on fine paper and are offered in limited edition runs. Posters are the egalitarian cousin of the fine art print—anyone can buy one.

Nava

Nava prints its photos on 100-pound paper and includes the artist and publisher’s name along the border at the bottom of the print. It’s a small tradeoff (particularly if you’re going to frame the piece) that grants access to some pretty great contemporary artwork.

You can pre-order a print on Kickstarter.