MONOLITH — Issue No VII · MMXXVI

Wallpapers, treated as art.

A quiet catalogue of high-resolution plates for phone, desktop, and tablet — published sparingly, printed only in pixels, and never shown twice.

View the collection Read the atelier note
Plates of stillness. Editions of one thousand. 48 plates · 12 editions · est. 2024
§ 01 — Collection

A small, deliberate catalogue of images meant to be lived with.

Each plate is composed for phone, desktop, and tablet, delivered in lossless formats, and retired from sale at one thousand downloads. We do not restock.

Plate 001 · Landscape

Northern Void

A single moon, held inside a half-kilometre of darkness. Shot at the winter edge of Lofoten and rendered down to grain. For desks that do not wish to be loud.

6016 × 8016 px PNG · JPG · HEIC Single plate
USD12
Acquire plate — 001
Plate 002 · Colour field

Oxblood Threshold

Vertical ruling of graphite and bone, interrupted by a rising tide of deep red. Named after a doorway the photographer refused to enter.

5120 × 6400 px PNG · JPG Single plate
USD9
Acquire plate — 002
Plate 014 · Interior

Rothko's Window

A frame inside a frame, held against an interior wall at dusk. For those who like a picture that takes most of a minute to resolve.

4032 × 5040 px PNG · JPG · HEIC Single plate
USD14
Acquire plate — 014
Plate 022 · Celestial

Eclipse, Three Minutes

The corona photographed from a farm road in Nebraska, printed at a size that forgives nothing. A long stare, rather than a wallpaper.

8192 × 10240 px PNG · TIFF Single plate
USD22
Acquire plate — 022
Plate 033 · Object study

Linen, Unfolded

One square metre of unbleached linen, photographed in raking light. The subject is nothing; the subject is weave.

4000 × 5000 px PNG · JPG Single plate
USD7
Acquire plate — 033
Plate 041 · Horizon study

The Thin Meridian

A single horizon line drawn across six miles of fog. Intended as a lock-screen for people who prefer to arrive at their phones slowly.

3024 × 4032 px PNG · JPG · HEIC Phone edition
USD4
Acquire plate — 041
Pack 001 · Six plates

Quiet Mountain

Six adjacent studies of the same ridge in Hakuba, shot on six consecutive evenings. Comes as a bound PDF lookbook and a rotating desktop set.

Up to 7680 × 4320 px PNG · JPG Pack of 6
USD49
Acquire pack — 001
Pack 007 · Twelve plates

Twelve Ceremonies

A year's worth of geometric interiors — one plate for each lunar month — assembled as a full phone, tablet, and desktop set. The house edition.

Multi-device PNG · JPG · HEIC · TIFF Pack of 12
USD89
Acquire pack — 007
§ 02 — Atelier note

Most wallpapers are noise. We are interested in the other kind.

MONOLITH began as a private folder — a quiet place where one photographer kept the images she refused to publish anywhere else. They were too slow for a feed, too small for a print, and too particular for a stock library. They sat there for four years.

— The editor, from the foreword to Issue No I

We publish a single plate on the first and third Sunday of each month. Each is offered for the length of one thousand downloads — no more, no less — then it is retired, quietly, into the archive, never to be reissued. We do not run sales. We do not restock. A wallpaper is an object you live with; like any object worth keeping, it deserves to be chosen, not stumbled upon.

Every plate is hand-composed for a handful of aspect ratios — 9:19.5, 3:4, 16:10, 21:9 — and every format is lossless. No watermarks. No upsells. No newsletter you will come to resent.

§ 03 — Read

What readers have said, quietly.

“
The first wallpaper I've owned that makes me want to put my phone face-down — not out of shame, but out of respect.
— Ines A. · Copenhagen
“
Other stores sell images. MONOLITH sells silence. I paid for Plate 014 and it quieted the entire room.
— Daiki M. · Kyoto
“
Buying a plate here feels the same as buying a small book. Which, for a file that lives on a screen, is an achievement.
— Hannah R. · Brooklyn
§ 04 — Practice

Four principles we will not bend, even when the market asks.

Restraint, in publishing, is its own form of quality control.

01

Composed, never collected.

Each plate is photographed, painted, or rendered for this catalogue. We do not license from stock, and we do not reframe other people's work. If we did not make it, we do not publish it.

02

Sold in thousands, not millions.

Every plate retires at one thousand downloads. Packs retire at two hundred. A sold-out plate is never reissued — it returns only to the owners who already hold it.

03

Lossless, always.

PNG, HEIC, TIFF, and carefully tuned JPG, delivered at the native resolution of every supported device. No watermarks. No web-compressed consolation files.

04

A newsletter you will not delete.

Two emails a month, sent on publishing Sundays. One image. One paragraph. No tracking pixels, no promotional chain. If we break this, it ends.

Personal use is unlimited across your own devices. For commercial use — a product wall, a film set, a hotel guest network — write to the atelier. We grant licences sparingly and transparently, and each one is signed.
Retired plates do not return. The only way to acquire one after its run is second-hand, from a prior owner. We maintain a small, slow register for that purpose — ask the atelier and we will forward your note.
A single purchase covers every device you personally own — phone, tablet, desktop, e-reader, lock screen, watch face. Share it with your partner, not the internet.
Because a subscription incentivises volume, and volume is the enemy of care. We would rather sell you two images this year that you keep forever, than two hundred you will quietly delete in a week.
§ 05 — Enrol

An image, every other Sunday.

Join the quiet list. One plate, one paragraph, twice a month — held in a plain black envelope, sent on publishing days only. You may leave at any time; most readers do not.

or, browse the collection