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](/glossary/washi) by hand with the [baren](/glossary/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](/glossary/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.