Spektacle + Sound

“There’s always some bit of imperfection. I don’t try to shoot perfect pictures or make them crystal clear,” says Noi, who got enough of that after years of managing creative agencies where he oversaw high-gloss campaigns for luxury fashion clients (think Burberry, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton) where everything was meticulously lit, styled, and retouched ad infinitum. “What I shoot at night is almost a reaction against all that.”

Despite the surreal textures, Noi’s work isn’t AI-generated; at least, not in the way one might assume. “People sometimes think it’s 100% AI,” he says. “Everything starts with a real photo.” Noi uses tools like Photoshop or even Midjourney to augment the image. Sometimes subtly, sometimes heavily. His process is an act of discovery as much as it is creation. “I tend not to go overboard and try not to over-rely on the technology. There’s a gut feeling when something’s finished. I’ll stop there.”

What Noi’s chasing is hard to define. A feeling, maybe. Or a moment that almost happened. It’s less nostalgia or déjà vu, more in medias res as the viewer gets dropped into a scene mid-beat, the music already playing, the faces already halfway gone.

“Music has always been the through line,” says Noi. Before the photography took off, he was mixing tracks as a DJ, exploring the same hazy sonic moods that now inform his visual world. Noi’s captions on Instagram rarely explain the images, but they’ll name a song: “Image envisioned whilst experiencing this track by…”

No autoplay. No handholding. Sound and picture intermingle, making his feed feel less like a digital gallery and more like flipping through the pages of a music magazine.

Noi’s images aren’t meant to be decoded or explained. He takes inspiration from literary theorist Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author and the idea that once an artwork is made, the creator steps back and meaning is up for grabs. “When someone sees an image, they don’t have the experience or the context of the person who created it,” Noi says. “It means they’ll never truly understand it. But it also means that whatever viewers bring to an image can be their own.”

Noi’s images capture the haze of London’s underground scene, from the music and energy, to fleeting figures and ephemeral moments. With just enough ambiguity for the imagination to take hold. The effect is like a night out you can’t quite remember. The result is an image you can’t forget.