POSTER PRINT: NIHON NO TANGO

Description

In the spring of 2025, when we began applying half-toning to some of our photographs, as an experiment, we realized that by making them look less photo-realistic, that we could better arrive at the essence behind the picture. (As a backgrounder, ‘half-toning’ is when the coloured tones of an image are reproduced as ink dots of varying sizes — think of old newsprint comic strips or Roy Lichtenstein ‘pop art’ pieces from the 1960s.) So by making a picture look less ‘real’, this would reveal something present that photo-realism was filtering out. What was revealed in the ‘posterizing’ of this one photograph was, for us, a vivid depiction of the movement: the writhing and the contorting of those tree branches that we could have stared into for so much longer than the fraction of a second it took for our still-camera to record it. (In fact, we can’t stop staring into this print of ours. It’s as though we never created it, only captured it and we’re still trying to understand what it is we captured, so we keep staring into it… or maybe we just need more hobbies, eh?)

Amongst ‘artsy’ types nowadays, who geek out on obscure printing techniques (which may or may not include us), there is a digital stencil duplicator machine made by a Japanese company called the RISO Kagaku Corporation that holds their attention (and maybe ours too…). The paper-based prints these machines churn out are referred to, amongst said ‘artsy’ types, as being ‘riso’ or ‘risograph’ prints. These are relatively expensive machines that few print shops in Canada possess (or would want to ever deal with). These are not regular printers. They are complex machines that cut a wax stencil that soy-based ink is pushed through. This ink never fully dries and it takes a master printer to hone this beast of a machine and its finicky ways. The advantage of printing with this Japanese stencil duplicator is that it can print short runs at relatively low-cost per unit. The process, however, of achieving that print has been at times painful, torturous, and absolutely rewarding for us. We have found ourselves tangoing with this very print medium which makes us believe it’s *precisely* the medium with which this image needs to be printed.

We entrusted Colour Code Printing, here in Toronto, to bring this three-colour print to life and couldn’t be happier with the result.

If you want to know more about the technology behind this print, you can find ample information on the internet if you search for ‘risograph print’. Before you do that, we highly recommend you consult the RISO company’s website.

https://www.riso.co.jp/english/product/digital_dup/index.html