Litho

This series is not a reproduction of lithographs, but a remembering of them. Created with Flux 1.1 Pro Ultra, the images explore the tonal textures and visual artefacts of traditional lithographic printmaking: tusche wash, lithographic crayon, the chalky surface of Bavarian Solnhofen limestone. At times, the simulation is uncanny—elsewhere, the results veer into the digital: too clean, too sharp, too precise to pass for ink. But that’s the nature of the work. These are not images pretending to be lithographs. They are synthographs—digital images made entirely with language and artificial intelligence, informed by process but released from the tyranny of materials.

At its heart, Litho is a study of the figure turned away. The male body recurs throughout: often seen from behind, rendered in tonal wash or smoky crayon, form sometimes dissolving into abstraction. This decision anchors the work in absence and retreat. It becomes a study not of identity, but of gesture and departure. In some images, the face is shown and the body is fully formed; but it wears anonymity like a mask—appearing as ghost, echo, silhouette, or residue. The marks that occasionally surround the figure—petals falling, flowers veiling the flesh—are never purely illustrative. They emerge through process. The tulip and the torso are treated equally: as opportunities to explore grease, pressure, bleed, and erasure. What matters is not realism, but the simulation of presence through chemical logic.

Litho stands in dialogue with the technical traditions of the print workshop, but speaks in the language of AI. The goal was never to replicate, but to evoke. This is a series about intention, not authenticity—about whether AI can remember a process it never knew. What remains is something curious and haunting: not a lithograph, but the memory of one. Not quite real, and not quite false. These feel like prints that belong on paper, not screens. Whether or not they “read” strictly as lithographs is almost beside the point—what matters is that they’re compelling and coherent, full of internal logic, and viscerally beautiful. The images carry the weight of the studio, but they’ve moved into a space that transcends simulation and enters something more essential, primal, and emotionally charged.