Michael Kenna & Rowell

History of Photography

· · · Landscape Photography

Landscape photography is a genre focused to show different spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. This style usually captures the presence of nature sometimes free of man-made obstructions, trying to prize the pure and greatness of nature; but also, there are photographers whom captures thecoexistence among nature and construccions. Urban landscapes are also very impressive for the greatness of the construction’s design.

Normally, people and animals are not shown in a landscape, unless if they are relatively small in the image and have been included in the composition to show scale. Photographers usually attempt to transmit an appreciation of the world, the views that the actualsociety do not used to apreciate every day. Landscapes photographs allow us to taste and delight the world.

There is no pure or absolute definition of what makes a landscape in photography, it has become a very broad term, encompassing urban, industrial, macro and nature photography. Waterfalls and mountains are very popolar in classic landscape photography, influenced by the traditionallandscape painting. Some photographers argue that man-made structures in general, the city, sea coast and any construction that shows the presence of human activity should not be included in a landscape.

This kind of photographs that do contain these elements, are better called seascapes or cityscapes. However, if natural scenery dominates an image, it can probably be called a landscape.Landscape photography also has a very productive side, helps environmental protection organizations photographing unspoiled places bringing these areas into the public eye furthering the cause with the photos. Many photographers use medium or large format systems to record as much detail as possible.

· · · Michael Kenna
Michael Kenna is probably considering the most influential landscapephotographer of his generation. He works at dawn or during the night but he has always concetrated primarily on the interaction among the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the nature in landscapes, human - made structures and sculptural mass. He has over twenty publications of his work among books and catalogs.

Kenna is an English photographer born at 1953 in Widnes, Lancashire, England. There wascertainly no tradition of art among his family at the time. Growing up he was highly impressed by the Catholic Church and just before he became 11 years old, he entered a seminary school to train to become a priest lefting the school at the age of 17. Art had been one of his strongest subjects and he went on to study at the Banbury School of Art in Oxfordshire.

His photographs have especiallyinfluenced by the work of Josef Sudek, Eugene Atget, Alfred Steigliz but especially by Bill Brandt and memories from his childhood.

Most of his industries´s photographs are related with his early life, to the little and industry town where he grew up. He was able to go inside of factories with the workers and keep in the instalations until the factory get close. Kenna’s intention is artisticand trying to reconstruct a miniature pictoral world on photographic paper. He works alone, is a person who lives and enjoys solitude and that sense being alone in a large space is the hard of his work. He pretend to make people feel being infront of the landscapes he photographs.

He is best known for his preference for black and white landscapes; he believes that in this way, photographs areimmediately more mysteious than in color because we see in color all the time. It is also more subjective. His choice for this color style its also because of the feelings it causes, sensations that have characterized his work: quieter and calm.
This subjectively that he experiments with his photographs in the dark-room has involved him more with his artwork and we can see reflectem in them his...