Michael Kenna believes in the uniqueness of every single moment - and in the infinity of photographic possibilities associated with it. With his very own view of the world, the British photographic artist has become one of the most important landscape photographers of his generation, with his poetic black and white images fascinating a worldwide audience.
(...) Continue readingMichael Kenna - Ten valuable apprenticeship years with Ruth Bernhard
Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, a small town in the county of Cheshire on 20 November 1953, and grew up with four brothers in a working-class family of modest means. His parents were Irish Catholics, which initially led Kenna to pursue a career as a priest. Against his family's wishes, however, his growing inclination towards art led him to the Banbury School of Art, where he gained his first experience of photography, and in the mid-1970s, attended the London College of Printing where he began to work intensively with commercial photography. His role models included Eugène Atget, Bill Brandt and Josef Sudek. Kenna was subsequently able to take on his first small commissions for record companies and newspapers, often worked as an assistant for established photographers, and also managed the sale of stock photos for a photo agency in Fleet Street. In 1977, Michael Kenna moved to San Francisco. There he met the German-born photo artist Ruth Bernhard, for whom he worked as an assistant for almost ten years - an extremely formative time for the young artist.
Japan as a central motif in Kenna’s art
Michael Kenna initially pursued landscape photography as a hobby; he was unsure whether this activity would ever allow him to earn a living. When choosing his subjects, the photographer often did not make it easy for himself. While many of his colleagues wait for the right light, Kenna deliberately chooses to shoot in unfavourable lighting conditions. The artist is interested in structures in architecture and landscapes, in interactions and the dialogue with his motif. This approach leads to intimate, poetic photographs with a distanced, almost meditative character. He has a special affection for Japan, which he has travelled to repeatedly since his first visit in 1987 and made the subject of his artistic work. To mark his fiftieth birthday, he undertook a month-long pilgrimage through 88 Shingon Buddhist temples on the central Japanese island of Shikoku. The result of this journey was the 250 black-and-white photographs in the illustrated book Forms in Japan, which can be seen as the artist's magnificent declaration of love for the country.
Light landscapes, dark concentration camps
To this day, Michael Kenna prefers analogue photography and largely rejects digital methods. In particular, he sees the possibilities of post-processing using image programmes on the computer as a distortion of the image and a break in the connection between photographer and subject. Kenna mainly photographs with Hasselblad and Holga cameras. His unique visual language has won him a large following and is today enthusiastically imitated by many young photographers. In addition to his celebrated landscape photographs with their ethereal lighting moods, the artist also devoted himself to a comprehensive and highly acclaimed series of photographs of German concentration camps, and has also produced a series of commercial commissions for renowned companies such as Rolls-Royce, Dom Pérignon, Audi, Sprint and Volvo.
Micharl Kenna lives today with his family in Seattle in the USA.
Michael Kenna - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
