Dr Friederike Otto, Director of the Environmental Change institute and an Associate Professor Global Climate Science Programme

This portrait shows Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist and Associate Professor on the Global Climate Science Programme, photographed in connection with her work at the Environmental Change Institute. Artz's mokuhanga rendering shifts the documentary photograph into a printed object: separate woodblocks carry the figure's silhouette, the modeling of the face, and the surrounding environment, each impression registered onto [washi](/glossary/washi) in turn. Where the original image holds the smooth dynamic range of digital photography, the print reduces it into legible color planes, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients available for soft passages such as background atmosphere or facial shadow. The decision to render a working scientist in this slow, hand-printed medium aligns with Artz's interest in commissioned portraiture of figures in public life — writers, artists, researchers — translated out of photographic immediacy into a medium that bears the marks of its own making. The carved block does not flatter or accelerate; it records what the artist chose to retain.