PHOTO: Michael Kenna-Celebrating Fifty Years

British photographer Michael Kenna is best known for his black-and-white landscape photography in which he often utilizes drawn-out exposure times, some up to 10 hours in length. Most of Michael Kenna’s photography is taken at dawn or at night, and he has commented that “you can’t always see what’s otherwise noticeable during the day … with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable of seeing”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Robert Mann Gallery Archive

Michael Kenna was born in 1953 in the industrial town of Widnes in the northwest of England. Kenna grew up with five siblings in a poor, working-class, Irish-Catholic family. He attended seminary school for seven years (until age 17), with the intention of becoming a priest. 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 in both the graphic design 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, 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, Cornell Capa, Marc Riboud and Jacques-Henri Lartigue for the John Hillelson Agency on Fleet Street. In 1977, Kenna moved to San Francisco for the opportunity to show and sell his work in galleries. There, he met Ruth Bernhard, who hired him as her printer 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. This year marks half a century since Michael Kenna started working as a professional photographer. In honor of reaching a significant milestone, over twenty photographs made around the globe are selected for the exhibition “Celebrating Fifty Years” by Michael Kenna himself. The exhibition is a beautiful reflection of Kenna’s personal vision of the world spanning half of a century. The exhibition journeys from panoramic views of Northamptonshire, England, to the desert dunes of Merzouga, Morocco, to the tranquil coasts of Hokkaido, Japan, to Venice, Italy to name a few. Kenna’s keen eye radiates through the long exposures of morning clouds and the motif of birds gliding through the sky. Kenna beautifully captures the geometrics of ancient Stonehenge as well as seaweed farms and a lone-fishnet structure in Biwa Lake. The selection navigates places both foreign and familiar through black and white scenes full of spacious calm and the guiding air of the artist himself.  All of the prints are beautiful renderings, traditional silver prints made in the darkroom and toned using Sepia by the artist.  Kenna’s renowned pairing of natural landscapes and human-made structures, captured as the sun peaks over the horizon or in twilight, ask viewers to consider what lies just beyond the visible. Kenna’s own curation properly reflects his intricate skill and sense of adventure with views of the city-that-never-sleeps across from medieval Pacentro to the icy sheets of St. Petersburg, Russia juxtaposing the misty, rolling mountains of Yunnan, at the most eastern tip of the Himalayas.

Photo: Michael Kenna, Six Flying Birds, Bath, Avon, England, 1987, Toned silver print, 8 x 7.75 inches, edition of 25, © Michael Kenna, Courtesy the artist and Robert Mann Gallery

Robert Mann Gallery, 14 East 80th Street, Penthouse, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 14/12/2023-2/2/2024, Days & Hours: By appointment, www.robertmann.com/