Michael Kenna is a photographer, known for his black and white photographs of landscapes and advertising. He has been photographing around the world to produce beautiful photographs. If you would look at his photographs you can see that he made them because they all posses the same quality as well as are black and white, but each photo tells a completely different stories. I believe his work really stands out compared to other photographers.
Kenna focuses on photographing at dawn or at night with very long exposures. Often up to ten hours. His work has been found in places in galleries in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States. Often it is said that his art “There is no mistaking authorship of his photographs; they all bear the stamp of his unique, and poetic vision”. Kenna’s work is published in many books, magazines, museums and newspapers. Even though Kenna will photograph the same thing over and over it usually is a completely new composition.
In my search about Kenna I discovered that he is from England. He found his interest in photography when he attended The Banbury School of Art located in Oxfordshire. He said that he believed this was a profession where he could have a real income. He loved painting but he didn’t believe that he could survive from that. He wanted to do commercial photography to make a living and landscape photography as a hobby.
In an interview Kenna said that he used to like photographing in the early morning. He likes photographing in times when there are very few people around. Kenna said that he likes photographing at night because he isn’t challenged by what happens in front of the camera and that morning light very diffused. Now he states that he is no longer limited to taking photographs at certain times. He is able to takes pictures at all times.
Kenna loves photography because it gives him a reason to get out at odd times. He loves to travel and this gives him a reason to. He believes his style of photographing hasn’t changed since he started. He also likes to work on three to four projects at a time. Even after he has finished and submitted a project he often continues his studies. Also, Kenna often goes back to the place he photographed before. One thing that I found that makes Kenna stand out in photography is his love for printmaking. He doesn’t just stop after taking a photo. He continues to work to make the image and the print equal.
What I really enjoyed about Kenna’s work was his advertising. He has lots of big clients which he uses his style of black and white photography in order to create advertising. His work really stands out. I enjoyed looking through albums of his work and really wish to learn more about his work by visiting galleries. Also, some of the studies he worked on that I really enjoyed were when he visited NYC. These studies he worked on for years, but each photo has the feel that it’s done by the same photographer, but at the same time none of them tell the same story. Some of them are really abstract others have very different lightings. It is just very exciting to look at them. Also what I believe is important that he takes several pictures and each one tells another story. For example when he did his studies on the Empire State building, he had several studies and each one came out completely different. Each photograph showed a completely different story to his viewer’s eyes.
Artur Kazak | Akwebstudio
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