Max Richter

A mokuhanga portrait of Max Richter, the German-British composer whose work spans contemporary classical, post-minimalist, and film scoring. As elsewhere in Andrea G. Artz's portrait sequence, the print begins from a digital photograph: the image is separated into colour layers, transferred via a key block carrying the principal contours, and built up across additional cherry or shina blocks each holding a single hue or [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, printed in registration on [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren) and water-based pigments thinned with rice paste. The continuous tonal shading of the photographic source is converted into discrete, layered fields, with bokashi managing the transitions between them. Within Artz's broader body of work — which has moved from her early training in portrait photography into collage, folded paper sculpture, and site-specific installation — the mokuhanga portraits function as a deliberately slow translation of digital source material, where the speed of photographic capture is replaced by the registered accumulation of separate hand-pulled impressions.