Michael Kenna
Thirty Year Retrospective

June 23 — August 26, 2005
PRESS RELEASE   IMAGES

This exhibition celebrates thirty years of achievement by acclaimed British photographer Michael Kenna. Included will be photographs from England, France, Russia, Czechoslovakia, as well as a new series from Japan. From Le Nôtre's formal gardens to the ominous cooling towers of Ratcliffe Power Station, to the spiritual minimalism of his most recent work from Hokkaido, Kenna's images reflect more than what is in front of the camera's lens—his intimate landscape studies preserve the emotional terrain of his subjects as well. In the introduction to Retrospective Two, Anne Wilkes Tucker attributes Michael Kenna's inspiration to "thoughtful curiosity, a restless pleasure in travel, a need for solitude, a delight in visualizing his own imagination... a broad love of nature, and, most of all, a confidence in his own aesthetic values." Wherever his wanderings have taken him over the past thirty years, Michael Kenna has always found beauty and harmony in a chaotic world.

Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, England in 1953 and graduated from The London College of Printing in 1976. His work is part of such public collections as The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His recent publications include Retrospective Two (Nazraeli, 2004), Ratcliffe Power Station (Nazraeli, 2004), and Japan (Nazraeli, 2003).