Nicholas Noisenest — Photographer
Finding Emotional Responses
Nicholas Noisenest is a twenty-five year old photographer in Raleigh. He has been interested in photography since he was young. “When I was nine, I went to Ellis Island, and I was intrigued by the level of human suffering you could feel looking at the photos of the people. They were people on the last leg of their hope, and I wanted to take all of that with me,” Noisenest explains. He feels he connected with the suffering at Ellis Island, and that experience has remained very important to him even today. Everything he knows about photography he learned from books and experience.
“Once I complete what I feel is enough training—personalized training inside a medium—it gets kind of boring and I move outside of it,” Noisenest says. This means he is always pushing his boundaries and trying new techniques. His recent work mixes traditional photographic print with a variety of embellishments: “water color, acrylics, oil dyes, markers, dirt, blood—anything that will fit; anything that works.” He is most interested in emotional responses, and a lot of his work is in photographing sadness. “I find it all over,” he says.
Noisenest uses both digital and film cameras. He also builds cameras. One of his current projects is to create the world’s largest camera. Currently, he is working on scale models for that endeavor. He also makes his own film.
His ideas are often a reflection of his mood as well as his surroundings—even the most mundane activities, like running errands. A few of his pieces are inspired by a piece of music or literature, but he says, “Those are few and far between.”
Noisenest puts a lot of emphasis on exclusivity. While he may have a short run of a print (5 or 10 copies), he doesn’t mass produce any piece, and he never sells his originals. In fact, it’s the only statement he ever tries to make. “I don’t think it’s fair that people run limited editions solely to augment its retail value by way of stripping it of its artistic value and replacing it with an arbitrary value based on greed and false exclusivity,” he says. He also sells his prints at low cost. “I want people who like my artwork to be able to have it if they want it. A lot of people who appreciate my work aren’t super wealthy art collectors that want to buy a one hundred thousand dollar painting, and that’s fine,” Noisenest explains.
His work is available on Tumblr and Facebook.
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