Fatma Said

Built around a single sitter, Fatma Said converts photographic likeness into the layered surface of mokuhanga. Each color in the print corresponds to a separately carved cherrywood block, inked with water-based pigment and pressed into the washi by hand with the baren. The technique works against the smoothness of digital photography: tonal gradations that the camera records continuously must be resolved into discrete planes, while soft transitions are reintroduced where needed through bokashi. The resulting portrait sits between the indexical record of the photographic source and the constructed quality of the carved block. For Artz, who trained as a portrait photographer before extending her practice into installation and print, this kind of translation is consistent with a body of work that treats photography as raw material rather than finished artifact. The figure remains identifiable, but its visual language is no longer that of the lens.