Synopses & Reviews
A beautifully designed monograph surveying the works of the highly acclaimed contemporary photographer. Kennas photographs captivate viewers through their silent drama and magnetism: rather than being accurate descriptions of a place, the photographer seems interested in capturing the invisible lines which enclose space, and in so doing arousing a viewers imagination and reverie. This catalog showcases 290 black-and-white photographs: 200 trace the artists career, from early 1970s images shot in England, to the photographs of the following three decades, which result from travels and commissions in every continent throughout the world; 35 record Venices everlasting appeal; 20 reflect one of Kennas most important jobs, that of recording the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
Synopsis
Whether they are of Abu Dhabi, California, Egypt or Emilia, all of the images he produces are lit with a constant physical light and sentiment; elements that this photographer seems to always have with him the way he does with his camera bag, and through which all he wants to do is observe the world. I find such an aesthetic to be more that of a painter than a photographer somehow. Better yet, that of a post-documentary or neo-pictorialist photographer, who experiences and conceives his work to be the exprssive gesture of an artist for whom the subject is above all the opportunity for a tremendous but constant variation in his view of the world.
Ferdinando Scianna
About the Author
Michael Kenna was born in England in 1953 but has been living in the United States for thirty years. Of the many showings of his works that have been held in public venues and private galleries, mention should be made particularly of those in museums in France, Japan and the United States, the latest being in the French National Library, Paris, in 2009. Sandro Parmiggiani is an art historian and art critic. He is also the curator of hundreds of exhibitions in Italy and abroad.