Currently, in the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, you can visit an exhibition with works of Japanese photographer Naoya Hatekayama. He has a very extensive portfolio of stunning landscapes, buildings, and Tokyo underground photography, which reach very high auction prices. One of his underground photos really caught my eye, and I dreamed of having it as a homescreen wallpaper for my iPad. I desperately tried to find digital copies of his works, regardless of whether I could get them for free or had to spend some money. But usually, professional photographers, including Hatekayama, only show their work to the public through museum exhibitions and printed photo books, not digitally. This way of publishing art has both advantages and disadvantages: on one hand, printing is the only effective way of keeping the copyright handling of your pictures and piracy of digital copies somewhat under control. Yet, it also means that many people interested in photography, especially those who do not live in big cities with renowned museums exhibiting photography, don’t have access to it. And obviously they cannot be used as wallpapers (although this would be for private, non-commercial use).

On the other hand, art which was created digitally is most of the time solely distributed digitally, hence it’s often available as a free download. However, when it comes to wallpapers for both OS X and iOS, I personally prefer photos over digital art. Of course, real pixel lovers need good resources for both kind of background images to ensure their displays are always a pleasure to look at. Websites like InterfaceLift or Poolga may completely satisfy your needs for photographic and digitally crafted backgrounds, but you always need to rely on multiple resources, which means you have to spend a lot time searching, saving, and organizing. Kuvva, founded by @djbradfield and @Nalden and based in Amsterdam, is a new web-based application project that tries to solve this problem by building up an extensive resource of handpicked photographs and digital wallpapers you have fast and easy access to. Read more