Michael Kenna

[posiview]

I first saw Michael Kenna’s photographs while perusing the internet. I was immediately fascinated by them and looked for more and more, and also watched all the videos on Youtube I could find. I warmed to him straight away.

I decided to order one of his books and it arrived last week: Images of the Seventh Day

It’s a wonderful book. I can sit for some time looking at any of his photographs, but some are stunning. Difficult to choose a favourite, but at a push it would be this one.

The composition and detail are great and the trees have a very human feel to them. I like how the trees are quite dense on the right and then thin out towards the left. It’s like a marching army and even has at the lower right a fallen ‘soldier’.

This photograph reminded me of this painting in Leeds Art Gallery.

I find how he can take a scene, reduce it, and reduce it more, until there is very little left, but what is left really impacts on me. This one for for example, so little and yet so much.

And, don't get me started on his Ratcliffe Power Station series

If you are not familiar with his work, I'd encourage you to check his work out.

It’s a book that sits next to me in the living room and I’ll be reading it a lot over the coming months

Cheers.

 

[Byker28i]

I was in Verona a couple of years ago and he had an exhibition there. Stunning work.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I've liked his work for a good few years and I've bought, at not inconsiderable expense, the Calais Lace and Ratcliffe Power Station books as my own genre of photography is monochrome industrial landscape. He of course shoots a fairly diverse selection of landscapes, albeit not to everyone's tastes. His 8x8 prints sell in the UK for about £1200 from his gallery representative, so he's doing something right.

He jokes in one interview that he invented the sticks in water style of photography, possibly a reference to his long time use of very long exposure seascapes, but his work is more than just that. The interviews on his website are worth a read if you have a spare hour or so.