Kaho Kojima

This mokuhanga portrait of Kaho Kojima is part of Andrea G. Artz's body of single-sitter prints translating photographic portraits into Japanese water-based woodblock. The process begins with a digital photograph that is reduced to a small number of tonal layers; each layer is then transferred to a separate woodblock, carved, inked with nori-bound water pigments, and impressed onto pre-dampened washi using the baren. Because the pigment penetrates the paper rather than coating it, the resulting image carries the absorbent, breath-like surface particular to mokuhanga, with edges that soften where adjacent blocks overlap. Bokashi passages handle the modelling of the face, while sharper key-block contours hold the sitter's likeness. As a German-born, London-based artist trained originally in portrait photography and holding an MFA from the University of Leeds, Artz uses these prints to test how a contemporary photographic portrait survives translation into a centuries-old printmaking idiom — a question that runs through her sculptural and installation work as well.