Noise
Dublin Core
Title
Noise
Subject
Poetic
Description
The moment humankind gained the ability to define things, everything came alive. We have been constantly wrapping the world in layer upon layer of rhetoric, creating different perspectives, metaphors and interpretations of everything. Every object, everything that happens. Contemporary life is saturated with “my” truths and the falsehoods of "others".
I found myself no longer able to distinguish the voices: “are they noise I should dismiss, or are they in fact part of what makes my existence?” Doubt and unease—about where I am headed, about truth and fallacy, right and wrong—quietly take root in a world that, in the my mind, alternates between agitation and stillness.
Noise is a photobook project born from this kind of doubtness. It a visual poem that shapes and poses an open inquiry into my disorientation in the modern world. In the current period, we have too many certainties in ideas and manifestos. They’re overflowing. Through the project, I attempt to find a direction whilst being immersed in the noise of loud opinionated voices in this over-certain age.
“Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? ”
“Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers?”
“Or do they only believe the stammerer?”
After Nietzsche hurled these questions in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the metaphors from images embedded in Noise started questioning if people can truly see the reality behind the commotion of life and how we co-exist without interfering with others. How can we become the nomad who gallops across our own existential terrain?
Or maybe, as Kant says, we are merely confined within the room of our own will, gazing at distant things-in-themselves that remain forever beyond our reach?
I found myself no longer able to distinguish the voices: “are they noise I should dismiss, or are they in fact part of what makes my existence?” Doubt and unease—about where I am headed, about truth and fallacy, right and wrong—quietly take root in a world that, in the my mind, alternates between agitation and stillness.
Noise is a photobook project born from this kind of doubtness. It a visual poem that shapes and poses an open inquiry into my disorientation in the modern world. In the current period, we have too many certainties in ideas and manifestos. They’re overflowing. Through the project, I attempt to find a direction whilst being immersed in the noise of loud opinionated voices in this over-certain age.
“Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? ”
“Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers?”
“Or do they only believe the stammerer?”
After Nietzsche hurled these questions in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the metaphors from images embedded in Noise started questioning if people can truly see the reality behind the commotion of life and how we co-exist without interfering with others. How can we become the nomad who gallops across our own existential terrain?
Or maybe, as Kant says, we are merely confined within the room of our own will, gazing at distant things-in-themselves that remain forever beyond our reach?
Creator
Runjie Wu
Publisher
Self-published
Date
2026
Format
Hand bound
Inner page printed on Fedrigoni Arena Ivory
Inner page printed on Fedrigoni Arena Ivory
Photobook Item Type Metadata
Dimensions
115×180×25 mm
Number of Pages
225
Number of images
136
Edition Size
30
Place of Publication
United Kingdom
Designer
Runjie Wu
Editor
Runjie Wu
Printer
Runjie Wu
ISBN
N/A
Website
runjiewu.com
URL Link to project
https://www.runjiewu.com/blank-1
Collection
Citation
Anonymous, “Noise,” Photobook Cafe Photobook Collection, accessed August 30, 2026, https://www.photobookcafe-archive.co.uk/items/show/2300.