start here.
essays on what it costs to look composed. fashion is the entry point. desire, money, and female selfhood are the destination.
there is a question i keep writing toward.
what does a woman know through the experience of being desired — and how does she keep that knowledge from being taken from her by the very thing that produced it?
soft notes is where i think through it.
i’m noa. i’m a photographer and writer based in greenpoint, brooklyn. i shoot other people for money and myself for reasons i’m still working out. the two things keep bleeding into each other — which is, i’ve started to think, the whole point.
i write about what it means to be seen. by a camera. by a man. by yourself in both. i write about desire before it has a name. about seduction as a structure, not a technique. about intimacy as a philosophical problem. about what a photograph takes from the person in it and whether you ever get it back.
the essay is the form i trust. every tuesday i publish one. it’s called the scene. it opens in a specific moment and goes somewhere i didn’t plan. that’s how i know it’s working.
how soft notes works:
free — every tuesday the scene. one specific moment. the detail i can’t unsee. the philosophical question it opens into. the first act is free. it’s real. it doesn’t resolve. it will stop you mid-sentence at least once.
paid — $8/month or $80/year the full tuesday essay — the turn, the part i couldn’t publish for everyone, the ending that doesn’t wrap up. plus: frames i kept (the photographs that survived the shoot, with captions), friday video (the question the tuesday essay raised, approached differently), the paid chat (daily, more private), and the full archive.
founding / soft circle — $180/year everything in paid, plus an audio coda after every tuesday essay — me talking through the thing i couldn’t finish on the page. two minutes, loose, late-night, unresolved. plus quarterly live salons, 24-hour early access to every essay, the notes that don’t become essays, and the soft circle chat.
if you’re new here — start with the most recent tuesday essay. if a line stops you, reply. i read every one.
🤍 noa
Perfect body and perfect beauty