No(i)se

This project emerged when I was experimenting with printing my photos, inspired by the Shoe Box project. After printing 5×7s, I decided to buy fancier paper samples from Moab. Having done zero research on papers (call it an impulse buy!), I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity in this sample pack, from glossy photographic sheets to more experimental, textured ones.

Fifteen years ago, I worked as an art director/graphic designer—but after stepping away from the field, I lost touch with the printing world entirely to focus on digital. Touching one of the paper samples instantly took me back to a time when I designed some A3 posters for a ballet class (my boss’s request as his wife worked at a ballet studio) and printed on a richly textured, expensive paper.

Kozo papers are “made from natural mulberry and hemp fibers using traditional Japanese Washi techniques and then coated to accept inkjet inks” (that sounded lustrous enough to me). I still remember the feel of this paper in my hands.

But! I didn't know what to print yet… However, my head went straight into thinking about Risograph printing, which for the naive version of me meant printing in a few selected colors through separate passes—similar to silkscreen (right?). I first discovered Risograph through the work of Ryan Putnam, an artist I’ve admired since 2015.

This project also pushed me to edit the heck out of my photographs—to emulate that film-grain–dither-esque noise I’d imagined. And now I’ve got a few more drafts queued up that I can’t wait to see in print.