A new book celebrates half a century of work by the landmark English photographer, who has captured everything from factories to shrines in stunning black-and-white images
“I’m getting old,” cackles Michael Kenna, when I ask how it feels to look back on 50 years in the photography business. “Much wiser,” he says, before cackling again. “I wish.” I’m talking to the English photographer over video from his office in Seattle, Washington, where he is surrounded by filing cabinets and binders stuffed with some of the 175,000 negatives that are his life’s work. Over the past half-century, Kenna has marked himself as one of the world’s most distinctive and influential landscape photographers, known for minimalist compositions often featuring otherworldly light.
This year marks half a century since he started working as a professional photographer, and he’s ringing in the occasion with a book, Michael Kenna: Photographs & Stories. It features 51 images, one for each year of his career. “We were going to call it Michael Kenna (1973-2023): Photographs & Stories,” he explains. “But I’m not dead yet, and including dates gives a different idea.”
