Michael Kenna (born 1953) is an English
photographer
A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographe ...
best known for his unusual black and white
landscapes
A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...
featuring ethereal light achieved by photographing at dawn or at night with
exposures of up to 10 hours. His photos concentrate on the interaction between ephemeral atmospheric condition of the natural landscape, and human-made structures and sculptural mass.
Many books have been published of his work, the subjects of which range from
The Rouge, in
Dearborn Michigan, to the snow-covered island of
Hokkaido, Japan
is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel.
The la ...
. Kenna's work is also held in permanent collections at the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,
The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC,
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
The is an art museum concentrating on photography.
As the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, it was founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and is in Meguro-ku, a short walk from Ebisu station in southwest Tokyo. The museum also ...
, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Biography
Kenna was born in 1953 in the industrial town of
Widnes
Widnes ( ) is an Industrial city, industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census had a population of 61,464.
Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, it is on t ...
in the northwest of England.
Kenna grew up with five siblings in a poor, working-class,
Irish-Catholic
Irish Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora, which includes over 36 million American citizens and over 14 million British citizens (a quarter of the British ...
family. He attended
seminary school for seven years (until age 17), with the intention of becoming a
priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...
. After discovering his talent for art, he decided against joining the holy priesthood in favor of a more creative career, despite the fact that his family would not have considered his interest a realistic livelihood option.
After a year at the
Banbury School of Art, where he received his first photographic instruction, Kenna applied to the
London College of Printing
The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It specialises in media-related subjects including advertising, animation, film, graphic design, photography and sound arts. It has approximately ...
in both the
graphic design
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
and
commercial photography departments, figuring he would go with the one that accepted him first (he graduated from the latter, in 1976). While pursuing his hobby of
landscape photography
Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes ...
, he took every chance to practice his craft commercially. He photographed theater dress rehearsals, and for record companies and the press; assisted other photographers, and sold stock photos of
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...
,
Cornell Capa
Cornell Capa (born Kornél Friedmann; April 10, 1918 – May 23, 2008) was a Hungarian American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa. Graduating from Imr ...
,
Marc Riboud
Marc Riboud (; 24 June 1923 – 30 August 2016) was a French photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the Far East: ''The Three Banners of China'', ''Face of North Vietnam'', ''Visions of China'', and ''In China''.
Early life and e ...
and
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Jacques Henri Lartigue (; 13 June 1894 – 12 September 1986) was a French photographer and painter, known for his photographs of automobile races, planes and female Parisian fashion models.
Biography
Born in Courbevoie in western Paris to ...
for the John Hillelson Agency on
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
.
In 1977, Kenna moved to San Francisco for the opportunity to show and sell his work in galleries. There, he met
Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer.
Early life and education
Bernhard was born in Berlin to Lucian Bernhard and Gertrude Hoffmann. Lucian Bernhard was known for his poster and typeface ...
, who hired him as her
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
in 1977. Over the next eight years, she introduced him to the creative potential of the printing process, in her unique methods of manipulating and interpreting a
negative.
Work
Kenna's photography focuses on unusual landscapes with ethereal light achieved by photographing at dawn or at night with exposures of up to 10 hours. Since about 1986 he has mainly used
Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist- ...
medium format
Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...
and
Holga
The Holga is a medium format 120 film camera, made in Hong Kong, known for its low-fidelity aesthetic.
The Holga's low-cost construction and simple meniscus lens
A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a ligh ...
cameras and this accounts for the square format of most of his photographs.
The main exception was for the photographs in Monique's Kindergarten for which a 4×5
large format camera
Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame o ...
was employed.
His work has been shown in galleries and museum exhibitions in Asia, Australia and Europe. He has photographs in the collections of the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, the Patrimoine photographique in Paris, the
Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
in London. His photography of the ruins of
concentration camps
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
was featured in the opening credits of the
Holocaust film ''
Esther's Diary'' (2010).
Kenna has also done commercial work for such clients as
Volvo
The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...
,
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to:
* Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct
Automobiles
* Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...
,
Audi
Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
Th ...
,
Sprint,
Dom Perignon Dom or DOM may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Dom (given name), including fictional characters
* Dom (surname)
* Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto
* Dom people, an ethn ...
and
The Spanish Tourism Board.
In 2000, the
Ministry of Culture Ministry of Culture may refer to:
*Ministry of Tourism, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports (Albania)
* Ministry of Culture (Algeria)
*Ministry of Culture (Argentina)
*Minister for the Arts (Australia)
*Ministry of Culture (Azerbaijan)
* Ministry of ...
in France made Kenna a
Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.
Publications
* ''Michael Kenna Photographs''. Stephen Wirtz Gallery and The Weston Gallery, 1984
* ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''. Arion, 1985; Northpoint, 1986
* ''1976-1986''. Gallery Min, 1987
* ''Night Walk''. Friends of Photography, 1988
* ''Michael Kenna''. Min Gallery, 1990
* ''Le Desert de Retz''. Arion, 1990
* ''The Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing''. The Elkhorn Slough Foundation, 1991
* ''A Twenty Year Retrospective''. Treville, 1994; Portland, OR:
Nazraeli, 2002
* ''The Rouge''. Ram, 1995
* ''The Silverado Squatters''. Arion, 1996
* ''Monique's Kindergarten''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 1997
* ''Le Notre's Gardens''. The Huntington Library, Art Collections Library and RAM Publishing, 1997 and 1999
* ''Night Work''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2000
* ''Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After''. Marval; Nazraeli, 2001
* ''Easter Island''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2001
* ''Japan''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli; Treville, 2002
* ''Calais Lace''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2003
* ''Boarding School''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2003
* ''Ratcliffe Power Station''. OR: Nazraeli, 2004
* ''Retrospective Two''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli; Treville, 2004
* ''Hokkaido''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2005
* ''Montecito Garden''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2007
* ''Mont St Michel''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2007
* ''Mont-Saint-Michel''. 21st, 2007
* ''Images of the Seventh Day'', 2011
* ''In France''. Portland, OR: Nazraeli, 2012
* ''Abruzzo''. Italy, OR: Nazraeli, 2017
* ''One Sunday in Beijing.'' Paris: Bessard, 2018. Edition of 700 copies.
*''Beyond Architecture''. Prestel, NY, London, Munich. 2019
*''Northern England 1983–1986''. Paso Robles, California: Nazraeli, 2021. .
Awards
* Imogen Cunningham Award, San Francisco, California, USA, 1981
* Art in Public Buildings Award, California Arts Council Commission, Sacramento, California, USA, 1987
* Institute for Aesthetic Development Award, Pasadena, California, USA, 1989
* Golden Saffron Award, Consuegra, Spain, 1996
* Chevalier of the
Order of Arts and Letters
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...
, Ministry of Culture, France, 2000
* Honorary Master of Arts, Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2003
* Hae-sun Lee Photography Award, Photographic Artist Association of Korea, Seoul, Korea, 2013
* Special Photographer Award, Higashikawa, Hokkaido, Japan, 2016
References
External links
*
Interview with Kennaby Tim Baskerville
About Monique's Kindergartenby John Paul Caponigro
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenna, Michael
1953 births
Photographers from Lancashire
Photography in Japan
Living people
People from Widnes