"Machine made pigment prints are of excellent quality, but for me silver prints remain the gold standard in photography. I still print my own work and find the time spent in the darkroom to be both fascinating and inspirational, it ultimately informs and enriches the way I see, and therefore photograph." Michael Kenna
An online exhibition of Michael Kenna’s most collected work over the past 50 years, featuring the remaining Artist Proof editions of photographs whose numbered limited editions have now been sold out by the 30 galleries in 14 countries that currently represent the artist. The collection represents an opportunity to acquire a print from editions in which the negative has been formally retired within Kenna’s archive. All of Kenna’s silver gelatin prints are still made by Michael personally in his darkroom at his home in Seattle, and our articles to accompany the online show will attempt to throw a spotlight on this enduring printing process.
FURTHER READING:
Michael Kenna | What Is An Artist Proof?
Michael Kenna Receives Top Arts Award And Donates Lifetime Work To France
Michael Kenna | Portraits Of An Artist 1974-2024
Michael Kenna | Career Overview
MICHAEL KENNA | THE DARKROOM DIARIES
Chapter 1 | Working With Film For Over 50 Years
Chapter 2 | Printing In The Darkroom
Chapter 3 | Retouching Prints By Hand
Chapter 4 | Finished Prints & Provenance
“Reflecting on 50 years of silver gelatin printing, a somewhat arduous, slow and painstaking process, I believe the final prints make it all very well worthwhile. I think it is a fundamental part of the creative journey. Personally, I relish the opportunity to make the many subjective technical and aesthetic decisions involved in getting to a final, finished silver print. Images, embedded in the gelatin, have been transformed in an almost alchemical process into three-dimensional precious, jewel-like prints. Machine made pigment prints are of excellent quality, but, at least for me, silver prints remain the gold standard in photography. It is also comforting to know that these prints are made to archival standards which means they should well outlast myself and collectors. I keep records of every print I have signed and editioned, and have prints in my own collection which I made 50 years ago. They are as good today as when I first made them.” Michael Kenna
12 Working Prints Of Michael Kenna's School Yard, Heptonstall, Yorkshire, England 1983 © Michael Kenna, All Rights Reserved
Michael Kenna (b. 1953) is widely recognised as one of the world's greatest and most influential living photographers. During Kenna’s fifty year career, his handmade silver gelatin prints have been shown in over five hundred solo 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 catalogues have so far been published on Kenna’s work.
In 2022, Kenna donated his life’s archive of photographs to be housed by the French state at the Mediatheque de Photographie et Patrimoine in Montigny-le Bretonneux. The donation included 3,683 original silver gelatin photographic prints of images made in 43 different countries, along with accompanying negatives and scans, 175,000 other negatives, 6,422 working prints from 1983-2000, 1,280 Polaroid prints, 87 books and monographs and all archives relating to Kenna’s artistic activity for the past 50 years.
"It was important to me that my life archive would be situated in one place and it is heartening to know that my work will rest alongside the oeuvres of photographers that I love and admire, such as Jacques Henri Lartigue, André Kertész, Willy Ronis and others.” Michael Kenna.
5 Rejected Prints Of Michael Kenna's School Yard, Heptonstall, Yorkshire, England 1983 © Michael Kenna, All Rights Reserved
