For over three decades, Michael Kenna has been looking at landscapes in ways quite out of the ordinary. Born in Lancashire, England in 1953, Kenna completed studies at the London College of Printing in 1976. The following year he moved to San Francisco and began eight years of work as Ruth Bernhard’s assistant and printer. Kenna’s mysterious photographs, often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night, concentrate primarily on the interaction between the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the natural landscape and human-made structures and sculptural mass. His photographs have been exhibited extensively in the international community and are in numerous public collections, including The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Over twenty books and catalogs have been published on his work, including most recently Night Work, Impossible To Forget, and Easter Island. In 2001, Kenna was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in France. His work is locally represented at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery [] in San Francisco.

Artist’s Statement
"Kenna’s travels have drawn him to Japan in recent years, where he found inspiration in the diverse landscapes of this ancient country: refined lines of traditional temple roofs; the watchful gaze of religious statuary; webbed patterns of fishing nets drifting along the jagged shoreline; the stark procession of fence posts against frozen ground. This exhibition is the first public viewing of Kenna's new works, offering a comprehensive overview of the his elegiac vision of Japan. This image was part of an extensive project throughout Japan, which was subsequently published by Nazraeli Press in 2004. The exposure was perhaps ten to twenty minutes during which time the water and clouds had become almost like mist."