Michael Kenna Essay

I have chosen to write my report on Michael Kenna. Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, England in 1953 and he specialized in artistic landscape photos. He was one of 5 children born into a working class home. He picked up his passion at Banbury school of the art where he began painting and then picked up photography later on. Michael Kenna moved to San Fransisco in 1977 where he since has lived to this day. He is best known for long exposure, artistic, black and white, landscape photos. In fact he has been known to shoot long exposures for over 10 hours at a time. Michael used a Hasselblad medium format and hola cameras with large format film to shoot his landscape photos. His work has been premiered at many galleries across the globe, some of which include Paris, Washington DC, Prague, and London. His …show more content…
This style has been used time and time again for him and has worked very well in telling a story and creating a narrative. The photography work he did at Auschwitz concentration camp showcased his style by creating a dark and terrifying tone, while his work at Easter Island created a tone of mystery and wonder. His style worked very well in Buddhist temples where he captured a statue of Buddha as his subject and used the background as his setting to give a tone of majesty and power. I chose to use Michael Kenna as the subject of my essay because I believe that he was very skillful in creating a story and he put an immense amount of thought and time into each photo he created. Through writing and researching this man I believe I have found someone that inspires me. At some point in my life I would love to learn to be able to tell stories in my photos much like Michael can. I believe especially the way he combines subjects into his symmetrical landscapes is most impressive and It was a wonderful learning experience trying to emulate a very accomplished