Joe Roth, an American whose photo has become a popular monument beyond himself, recently auctioned off a snapshot he took to the internet. The film grossed him nearly half a million dollars.
In 2005, when Joe Roth was 4 years old, the girl and her family traveled to see the Maybone (North Carolina) firefighters put out a fire that had started voluntarily for the purposes of a training. Dave, the father of little Joe, then took a picture of his daughter in front of the burning house.
A few years later, at a contest, Dave Roth sent the photo to JPG magazine and won the prize. Joe Roth became the “disaster girl” on the Internet when she was published in American Photo Magazine. To date, he is one of the most shared memes in the world.
$ 430,000 for a photo
Joe Roth, now 21, a student at the University of Chapel Hill (North Carolina), contacted a person a few months ago and offered to turn the image into an NFT (non-fungal token), now cryptocurrencies taken by famous entrepreneurs like Elon Musk.
The memo, which was listed on April 16, found a buyer for 180 ethers or about 30,430,000 after a 24-hour auction.
According to the American media, the Roth family will share this unexpected gain. The father, Dave, wants to use part of it to repair the air conditioning in his car, while Joe, who works in an Italian restaurant, wants to donate another part to an association to pay for his studies.
