Michael Kenna (born 1953) is an English photographer best known for his unusual black and white landscapes 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. 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, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Biography 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.

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 medium format and Holga 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 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 in Washington, D.C., the Patrimoine photographique in Paris, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His photography of the ruins of concentration camps was featured in the opening credits of the Holocaust film Esther's Diary (2010).Esther's Diary (2010) end credits

Kenna has also done commercial work for such clients as Volvo, Rolls-Royce, Audi, Sprint, Dom Perignon and The Spanish Tourism Board.

In 2000, the Ministry of Culture in France made Kenna a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.

In 2022, the Ministry of Culture in France made Kenna an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.

In 2022, Kenna also donated his life's archive to France's Library of Heritage and Photography.

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. . Forms Of Japan. Prestel, London. 2022. Trees. Paris, Skira, 2023. . Photographs and Stories. Paso Robles, California: Nazraeli, 2023. . Constellation. SKIRA Paris, 2025.

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, 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 Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, Ministry of Culture, France, 2022

References

External links

Interview with Kenna by Tim Baskerville About Monique's Kindergarten by John Paul Caponigro