©Michael Kenna, Honshu

The Center for Photographic Art recently opened Collecting Light, Photographs 1973-2023, a solo exhibition by renowned photographer Michael Kenna. In celebration of Kenna’s fiftieth year as a photographer, CPA partnered with Nazraeli Press to create this retrospective exhibition which includes some of the artist’s most beloved images as well as others that may not be as familiar. These photographs are all in Kenna’s gorgeous new monograph, Photographs & Stories, published by Nazraeli Press in association with the Center for Photographic Art to coincide with this exhibition. This exhibition features forty-five of Kenna’s sublime silver gelatin prints and offers the viewer a special experience, a chance to be transported and transfixed. Please join Michael Kenna at the opening reception and book signing on Saturday, November 18th. This once in a lifetime exhibition will be on view in Carmel through December 10th, 2023.

About the book: Kenna has selected one image for each year beginning in 1973 (when he enrolled in the Banbury School of Art, right after leaving seminary boarding school) and for each subsequent year. Following the “Photographs” section is “Stories”, in which Kenna writes a brief text about each photograph in the book, and how the making of it related to his own life’s situation at the time.

Michael Kenna is arguably the most influential landscape photographer of his generation. Often working at dawn or during the night, he has concentrated primarily on the interaction between the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the natural landscape, and human-made structures and sculptural mass. His exquisite, hand crafted, silver gelatin prints have been exhibited throughout the world and are included in such permanent museum collections as The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2022, Mr. Kenna was made an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

©Michael Kenna, Book Cover Photographs & Stories, published by Nazraeli Press

I remember buying my first Michael Kenna book. It was Night Work, and it was like a gateway drug. When you find yourself transported, well, you want it to happen again and again. And being a book collector, it didn’t take much to get me hooked. From Easter Island to Japan to Italy to China to France to England and places much closer to home such as Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing and Pebble Beach. Only Michael Kenna could photograph places I have walked a hundred times and make them new. So maybe it wasn’t so much about being transported as it was about witnessing transformation. The Matterhorn turned into a miniature. The Golden Gate Bridge unrecognizable. The gondolas of Venice appearing like untethered ghost ships. The great redwoods of the Avenue of the Giants seeming to march forward, backlit by a thousand suns. How Michael Kenna coaxed those trees forward out of the sea of fog at the break of day, we’ll never know. And how he and Chris Pichler, the publisher of Nazraeli Press, went through fifty years of Michael’s photographs and selected just fifty images – one per year of magnificent seeing – to make this book, is another mystery.

What I do know is that all the photographs in this monograph are sublime. From the impossible frozen wave in Yorkshire to the fragile fish weir perfectly situated below the glowing horizon in Honshu. There is even my favorite image in this collection of pictures, the magically levitating Plank Walk in Lancashire, England. I’ve stared at that picture so many times and marveled at its ability to lead me out across the silver water on a platform that both cuts into the picture plane and hovers above it. I don’t even know if this structure could support my weight, since at times it doesn’t even seem real. It’s okay though since I’m only going to stand on the shore and marvel at the illusion.

This book is a journey, navigating places foreign and familiar, winding through black and white scenes full of spacious calm. It is a great pleasure to look at these images, to feel that maybe everything is going to be all right after all, that the world isn’t such a bad place, and magic still exists. There is a reassuring quality to these photographs, and I, for one, am grateful for Michael Kenna’s half century of watching the light and recording his vision.

Installation of Collecting Light, Photographs 1973-2023 (works by ©Michael Kenna)

Installation of Collecting Light, Photographs 1973-2023 (works by ©Michael Kenna)

Installation of Collecting Light, Photographs 1973-2023 (works by ©Michael Kenna)

Michael Kenna is both a diurnal and nocturnal photographer, fascinated by light when it is most pliant. With long time-exposures, which might last throughout the night, his photographs often record details that the human eye is not able to perceive.

Michael Kenna ©Matteo Colla

Kenna is particularly well-known for the intimate scale of his photography and his meticulous personal printing style. He works in the traditional, non-digital, silver photographic medium. His exquisitely hand crafted black and white prints, which he makes in his own darkroom, reflect a sense of refinement, respect for history, and thorough originality.

During Kenna’s fifty year career, his photographic prints have been shown in almost five hundred one-person exhibitions and over four hundred group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. They are also included in well over a hundred permanent institutional collections. Ninety monographs and exhibition catalogs have so far been published on Kenna’s work.

©Michael Kenna, Ponti di Spagna, Bondeno, Ferrara, Italy. 2018

©Michael Kenna, Swings, Catksill Mountains, New York, 1977

©Michael Kenna, Bay Bridge and Pier 26, San Francisco, California, USA. 1985

©Michael Kenna, Kussharo Lake Tree, Study 9, Kotan, Hokkaido, Japan, 2009

©Michael Kenna, Plank walk, Morecambe, Lancashire, England. 1992

©Michael Kenna, Tiled Poles, Rhyl, Clwyd, Wales. 1984

©Michael Kenna, Covered Urn, Study 1, Versailles, France. 1987

©Michael Kenna, Ripples and Reflections, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. 1973

©Michael Kenna, Happy Birthday, Freya, Geneva, Switzerland. 2021

©Michael Kenna, Stone Pine Tunnel, Pineto, Abruzzo, Italy. 2016

©Michael Kenna, Birds on Poles, Biwa Lake, Honshu, Japan. 2001

©Michael Kenna, Avenue of the Giants, Humbolt, California, USA. 1998

About Michael Kenna

Born 1953 in Widnes, Lancashire, England
Currently lives in Seattle, Washington, USA

1973-76, London College of Printing, London, England.
1972-73, Banbury School of Art, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England
1964-72, St Joseph’s College, Upholland, Lancashire, England
—
Michael Kenna’s mysterious photographs, often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night, concentrate primarily on the interaction between the natural landscape and human-made structures. Kenna is both a diurnal and nocturnal photographer, fascinated by light when it is most pliant. With long time-exposures, which might last throughout the night, his photographs often record details that the human eye is not able to perceive.

Kenna is particularly well-known for the intimate scale of his photography and his meticulous personal printing style. He works in the traditional, non-digital, silver photographic medium. His exquisitely hand crafted black and white prints, which he makes in his own darkroom, reflect a sense of refinement, respect for history, and thorough originality.

During Kenna’s fifty year career, his photographic prints have been shown in almost five hundred one-person exhibitions and over four hundred group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. They are also included in well over a hundred permanent institutional collections. Ninety monographs and exhibition catalogs have so far been published on Kenna’s work.

Instagram: @michaelkennaphoto

About the publisher
Nazraeli Press was founded by Chris Pichler in Munich, Germany in 1990. In 1997, the press moved to the United States and in 2002 opened a subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Nazraeli Press has published over 600 titles on the fine and applied arts, with an emphasis on contemporary photography.

About CPA
The Center for Photographic Art second oldest members’ photography gallery organization in the country. A short walk from Ocean Avenue in Carmel, CA brings you to the venerable gallery originally occupied by the Friends of Photography, established in 1967, that was launched by iconic artists Ansel Adams, Cole Weston, and Wynn Bullock. Today, CPA continues to serve as a valuable asset to its members, the community, and the greater world of the photographic arts.

CPA’s gallery, which is free to the public, features the finest works of contemporary photography.  The CPA Lecture Series brings artists, curators, educators, and other leaders in the field of photography to our venue at the Sunset Center for in depth examinations into a variety of relevant topics. Special monthly events are planned for CPA members only and include critiques, film viewing, book reviews, and print exchanges to name but a few.
Instagram: @centerphotographicart