Sarah

A third Sarah print extends Lyon's serial portraiture, in which the same model is restated in different formats much as Hokusai or Hiroshige returned repeatedly to particular views. Mokuhanga is well suited to this kind of iteration: once the artist has resolved a likeness into separable tonal plates, cut and registered to kentō marks, related compositions can be produced by re-working a subset of blocks rather than starting from scratch. Lyon's CNC-cut cherry plates are designed in software, but the printing remains traditional — water-based pigment, paste, [baren](/glossary/baren), dampened [kozo](/glossary/kozo) [washi](/glossary/washi) — so each impression carries the slight tonal and registration variation that distinguishes a hand-pulled print from a reproduction. Where [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), the gradient wipe of pigment across a single block, lent atmospheric depth to nineteenth-century landscapes, Lyon achieves comparable continuous gradation through layered halftone plates. Sarah, in this version, shows the sitter again in a contemplative register consistent with his ongoing project of treating intimate, studio-scale photography as the raw material for monumental woodblock prints.