Artist Talk and Book Signing
Michael Kenna, Photographs and Stories: 1973 – 2023
November 18, 3:00 – 4:00pm Carpenter Hall at Sunset Center
Reception and Book Signing to follow from 4:00 – 6:00pm in the CPA Gallery
$10 for CPA members, $20 for non-members, max 125 tickets sold
A paid ticket secures you a seat at the talk. Tickets may be purchased at the door for standing room only.

The reception afterwards starting at 4:00 in the gallery is free to all.

About the book
In celebration of Michael Kenna’s fiftieth year as a photographer, Nazraeli Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Michael Kenna: Photographs and Stories. This gorgeous new monograph, beautifully printed on Japanese Kasadaka paper and bound in custom deep blue cloth, is limited to 2,000 casebound copies. It is published in association with the Center for Photographic Art to coincide with a traveling exhibition opening at their historic Carmel, California exhibition space in November 2023.

Kenna has selected one image for each year beginning 1973 (when he enrolled in the Banbury School of Art, right after leaving seminary boarding school) and for each subsequent year. Following the “Photographs” section is “Stories”, in which Kenna writes a brief text about each photograph in the book, and how the making of it related to his own life’s situation at the time.

Michael Kenna is arguably the most influential landscape photographer of his generation. Often working at dawn or during the night, he has concentrated primarily on the interaction between the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the natural landscape, and human-made structures and sculptural mass. Over ninety books and catalogs have been published on his work. His exquisite, hand crafted, silver gelatin prints have been exhibited throughout the world and are included in such permanent museum collections as The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2022, Mr. Kenna was made an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

“This book is a journey, navigating places foreign and familiar, winding through black and white scenes full of spacious calm. It is a great pleasure to look at these images, to feel that maybe everything is going to be alright after all, that the world isn’t such a bad place, and magic still exists. There is a reassuring quality to these photographs, and I, for one, am grateful for Michael Kenna’s half century of watching the light and recording his vision.”
— From the Introduction by Ann Jastrab

About the artist
Michael Kenna’s mysterious photographs, often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night, concentrate primarily on the interaction between the natural landscape and human-made structures. Kenna is both a diurnal and nocturnal photographer, fascinated by light when it is most pliant. With long time-exposures, which might last throughout the night, his photographs often record details that the human eye is not able to perceive.

Kenna is particularly well-known for the intimate scale of his photography and his meticulous personal printing style. He works in the traditional, non-digital, silver photographic medium. His exquisitely hand crafted black and white prints, which he makes in his own darkroom, reflect a sense of refinement, respect for history, and thorough originality.

During Kenna’s fifty year career, his photographic prints have been shown in almost five hundred one-person exhibitions and over four hundred group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. They are also included in well over a hundred permanent institutional collections. Ninety monographs and exhibition catalogs have so far been published on Kenna’s work. To see more of Kenna’s work, visit his website. > 

About the publisher
Nazraeli Press was founded by Chris Pichler in Munich, Germany in 1990. In 1997, the press moved to the United States and in 2002 opened a subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Nazraeli Press has published over 600 titles on the fine and applied arts, with an emphasis on contemporary photography. To learn more about Nazraeli Press, please visit their website. >

Member Tickets: You must be logged in to receive the discount and have your name added to the reservation list.