The Bridges of Michael Kenna @ Robert Mann Gallery, New York

The Bridges of Michael Kenna

Robert Mann Gallery, New York

September 4 - October 18, 2025

Bridges span rivers, connect cities, and carry us over what once seemed impassable. Where once there was only a divide — a river too wide, a ravine too deep — now there is a line drawn through space. We drive over bridges, walk across them, sometimes without even thinking. Yet Michael Kenna impressively photographs these bridges stretching across the globe in a unique light of the feat of human construction through time.

Kenna’s first show with Robert Mann Gallery opened in 1997 around the time the movie, The Bridges of Madison County was released; a moving love story about a photographer on an assignment to shoot historic bridges. Michael Kenna shares this fascination in capturing these structures, 

“Bridge structures are usually geometric and stationary with straight lines, verticals, horizontals and other angular constructs. The universe is constantly moving, flowing organic, uncontrollable and unpredictable. The abstract relationship between the two, almost like yin and yang, can be visually stunning and continues to fascinate and attract me.”--Michael Kenna

The bridges in this exhibition cross over bodies of water, from Sydney Harbour Bridge, Study 1, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to Brooklyn Bridge, Study 1, New York City, USA carrying multiple lanes of traffic, trains, and possibilities. While other small bridges such as Canal Bridge, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England and Ponte dei Sospiri, Venice, Italy stretch a short distance suitable only for individuals to journey across. Each bridge featured in the exhibition has its own historical significance and the possibility of one day being replaced. Michael Kenna beautifully captures the bridge’s story, often at dawn or dusk, along with often solidifying its place in the world. 

What was once the end of the road becomes a place of crossing. What was once isolation becomes relationship. The landscape is no longer defined by separation, but by the possibility of reaching across. In The Bridges of Michael Kenna, the artist’s careful treatment of each composition is apparent from frame to frame, in which every detail is given its due consideration to express this relationship between the bridge and the land. The images in the exhibition represent over 50 years of Kenna’s exploration of this subject matter.

With dozens of monographs and hundreds of solo exhibitions held around the world, Michael Kenna is one of the most widely exhibited and beloved photographers working today. His work has been shown at the Tacoma Art Museum, the Palazzo Magnani Museum in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, to name a few. Kenna's photographs are included in many distinguished public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Shanghai Art Museum; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore, India; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The Bridges of Michael Kenna is on view in conjunction with the artist’s exhibition, Japan: A Love Story, at the International Center of Photography through September 28, 2025. 

ROBERT MANN GALLERY 

508 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.robertmann.com

Michael Kenna @ A Gallery for Fine Photography, New Orleans, LA

Great Photographs by Michael Kenna: 1990-2017
A Gallery for Fine Photography, New Orleans
Through February 28, 2018 

Great Photographs by Michael Kenna: 1990-2017, a new exhibition at A Gallery for Fine Photography, spans the career of one of the most prolific and renowned landscape photographers working today. Michael Kenna’s career has taken him around the world to capture images of such varied subjects as abandoned automotive plants in Michigan, pastoral countryside in Japan, concentration camps in Eastern Europe, and deserts in Morocco. Michael Kenna’s exhibition at A Gallery for Fine Photography focuses primarily on his unique landscape photographs.

A selection of thirty black and white photographs, Great Photographs by Michael Kenna: 1990 - 2017 showcases a deceptively wide breadth of style and subject. These landscapes portray a vision of nature that is at once familiar and foreign – trees stretch forth at impossible angles, clouds burst over rolling mountaintops, and bodies of water are rendered as flat and reflective as glass. In addition to his serene landscapes, Michael Kenna’s work often depicts man’s intrusion on the natural world – a quaint Italian village dwarfed by the neighboring mountainside, a group of umbrellas planted eerily on an empty beach, or a ski lift puncturing the pure white of a snowy hillside. There is even the odd cityscape, with photographs of New York showing the city, as it exists both in line with and removed from our preconceived idea of Manhattan.

Michael Kenna has described his work as "more like a haiku rather than a prose." His evocative photographs attempt to find the surreal within the real, to make the invisible visible. Michael Kenna often works at the transitional hour of dawn or in the darkest depths of night, where light is at its most elusive and pliable. He uses long exposures – in some cases, up to 12 hours – to shape the landscape into something unfamiliar. When asked about his methods, Michael Kenna has said, “[at night] you can't always see what's otherwise noticeable during the day … with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable [of] seeing."

MICHAEL KENNA

Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, England in 1953. As one of five children born to a working class Irish-Catholic family, he initially aspired to enter the priesthood. However, his passion for the arts led him to The Banbury School of Art, where he studied painting and then photography. Later he attended The London College of Printing and began working as a photographer, artist, and printmaker. He moved to San Francisco in 1977, and currently resides in Seattle.

Michael Kenna's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the world with permanent collections in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Michael Kenna has also done a great deal of commercial work for clients such as Volvo, Rolls Royce, Audi, Sprint, Dom Perignon, Château Lafite Rothschild, and The Spanish Tourist Board.

A Gallery for Fine Photography
241 Chartres St., New Orleans, LA 70130
www.agallery.com

Venezia Livre Photos Michael Kenna 2010

 

Livre de photographies

Venezia est un nouveau livre de photographies de Michael Kenna à paraître chez Nazraeli Press. L'ouvrage rassemble une collection de photos datant des 30 dernières années. De nombreuses photographies y sont  publiées pour la première fois.

Ces photos de Venise font partie d'une grande exposition rétrospective de l'oeuvre de Michael Kenna au Palazzo Magnani Museum, Reggio Emilia, au printemps 2010.

Nazraeli Press a limité cette première impression de Venezia à 2000 exemplaires numérotés à la main. Une édition spéciale de 250 exemplaires numérotés et signés est également disponible.

Venezia
Photographs by Michael Kenna
Nazraeli Press
Mai 2010
64 pages - 12 x 13
40 photographies
ISBN: 978-1-59005-272-3
$75 - Edition limitée : $250
Photo © Michael Kenna
Courtesy of Nazraeli Press, 2010

Autres messages sur Michael Kenna

New York New York, Exposition à la galerie Camera Obscura

Michael Kenna, Exposition Photos, Galerie Camera Obscura

Michael Kenna, New York New York
Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris
14 octobre - 28 novembre 2009

(c) Michael Kenna. Courtesy of Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris, 2009

La galerie Camera Obscura (Paris) présente une exposition du photographe Michael Kenna. C'est la première exposition en France de ses photographies sur New York. La galerie Camera Obscura a déjà consacré deux expositions à Michael Kenna dont une rétrospective de l'oeuvre est présentée à la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

New York est un des sujets de photographies de Michael Kenna depuis plusieurs années. C'est particulièrement en 2000, 2003 et 2006 que New York est devenue plus centrale dans son travail et qu'il a ainsi pu terminer sa série présentée à Paris actuellement. "Le paysage et l'architecture sont les deux thèmes de prédilection de Michael Kenna : il a trouvé en New York, ville paysage, ville souvent décrite comme une formation naturelle, minérale, de proportions plus proches des canyons et des montagnes que des rues de nos villes, un sujet qui rassemble ses deux passions.

Michael Kenna a une grande maîtrise de l'image d'architecture : sa vision est naturellement construite et graphique, mais elle est aussi sublimée par une science de la lumière qui enrichit et porte à une autre dimension le formalisme de ses images. En choisissant le thème de New York, Micheal Kenna se confronte naturellement aux grands noms de l'histoire de la photographie, de Kertész à Stieglitz. Sensible à cette histoire, et au statut d'icône de cette ville que le monde entier connaît par les images, sa réussite est d'autant plus impressionnante qu'il se permet quelques citations et hommages à ses maîtres sans que cela entame la force et l'originalité du résultat" (Camera Obscura).

Michael Kenna réalise lui-même les tirages de ses photographies. Il s'agit de tirages argentiques légèrement virés par sulfuration. Ce sont ces tirages originaux qui sont exposés à la Galerie Camera Obscura. 

Michael Kenna est né en Angleterre, en 1953. Il est diplomé du London College of Printing (1976). Il vit depuis de nombreuses années aux USA et habite actuellement à Seattle.  

Galerie Camera Obscura
268, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris
Du mardi au samedi, de 13h00 à 19h00
www.galeriecameraobscura.fr/

Ulrike Palmbach, Michael Kenna, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco - Inertia, an installation & Other Works - Recent Works

Ulrike Palmbach: Inertia, an installation & Other Works 

Michael Kenna: Recent Works 

Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

November 15 - December 23, 2000

The STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY presents exhibitions of new work by ULRIKE PALMBACH and recent photographs by MICHAEL KENNA.

In the main gallery is exhibited the work of German-born artist, ULRIKE PALMBACH. The objects that Palmbach creates exist at the intersection of the familiar and the strange, the humorous and the tragic, the promising and the ominous. Palmbach zeroes in on ordinary daily peculiarities by using mundane raw materials such as felt blankets and twine in an extra-ordinary way.

"Inertia" is a large installation comprised of an abundance of felt objects that appear to have been left by a receded river current. Made from layers of blankets, the elements are uniformly rounded, as if worn by incessant spinning and tumbling. Their immobility evokes a yearning for the motion which shaped them, yet also defines their place at rest.

ULRIKE PALMBACH (b.1963, Stuttgart, Germany) received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989. Her work has been included in several exhibitions including the "1997 Bay Area Now show" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

In the small gallery are photographs by MICHAEL KENNA. Kenna's signature style is capturing simple beauty with black & white photography by combining formal aesthetics with elements of drama and a sense of stillness and isolation. While his photographs are quiet and meditative, they are equally rebellious. Michael Kenna presents an intelligent interpretation and presentation of nature juxtaposed with the man-made.

This exhibition also features Michael Kenna's recent photographs taken in such places as Easter Island, Russia, France, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Also included are recently printed images of cooling towers in England.

MICHAEL KENNA (b.1953, Widnes, Lancashire, England) will have a solo exhibition, "Night Work", opening this winter at the Friends of Photography. A book of the same name was recently published by Nazraeli Press in conjunction with this exhibition. Michael Kenna's photographs are in many museum collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Denver Art Museum.

STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.wirtzgallery.com

Michael Kenna, Detroit Institute of Arts - Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites

Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites

Detroit Institute of Arts

Through February 11, 1996

Photographs by Michael Kenna are featured in the exhibition Industrial Revelations: Photographs by Michael Kenna of the Rouge and Other Sites at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Included are approximately 60 of Michael Kenna's photographs of the Rouge Steel plant in Dearborn and 20 views of industrial sites in England.

This new series of photographs was inspired by Charles Sheeler's legendary photographs of the Rouge plant commissioned in 1927 by the Ford Motor Company. However, while Sheeler concentrated on the interior of the steel-making complex, Michael Kenna's work focuses on the exterior seen in views made at dawn, at dusk and during the night. His photographs are distinguished by their dynamic design, unusual viewpoints, and dramatic contrasts of light and shade.

Industrial smoke also plays a major role in Michael Kenna's work. In the exhibition catalog he comments, "I favor the power of suggestion over descriptive documentation and often use smoke, steam or mist in my work. These elements obscure details, simplify forms, strengthen foreground graphic shapes, and simultaneously tone down background distractions."

Born in a small industrial town in Lancashire, England, Michael Kenna, now based in San Francisco, has always felt at home in industrial environments. His striking and strangely beautiful views of the Rouge plant are contrasted with the photographs he made in the 1980s of nuclear plants in his native England.

THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

5200 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48202

www.dia.org