Silver Haikus: Asia Photographed, by Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna often works at dawn. Or in the dark hours of the night. With long-time exposure. Standing still. Outside. Capturing details that the human eye is not able to perceive. After that, he goes to a darkroom. With its calm, lonely energy, chemical baths and amber-coloured safelights. Meticulously and completely immersed in his world, handcrafting black and white prints of mountains, of fog and trees. Prints that are now showcased in the exhibition Silver Haikus, Asia Photographed at the Musée Guimet in Paris, until the 29th of September.

The exhibition is a celebration of the British photographer’s incredible donation of his work to France in November 2022: a donation that consisted of 3,883 original silver gelatin prints, captured in forty-three different countries. Of 175,000 negatives and 1,280 Polaroid prints. Of scans and contact sheets. It’s the collection of a life’s work. Something Kenna wanted to know in safety, stored and protected for future generations. Now, curator Édouard de Saint-Ours has created, with Silver Haikus, Asia Photographed, the first major retrospective of Kenna’s work focusing on his deep attachment to Asia — a love he has constantly explored since his first visit to Japan in 1987.

Inspired by this love, the featured photographs are minimalistic, contemporary, monochrome, with a bold use of emptiness. They distil emotions from a landscape and explore the interaction between natural beauty and human-made structures. By using high contrasts, rice fields, motionless water and bridges transform into mysterious, abstract patterns. And just like traditional Asian art, his processes and principles often converge toward subtle poetry.

A lonely tree sitting on a hill. Deep black bark. Like a stroke of ink, placed by a coarse brush, precise in movement, on a white piece of thick paper. Snowy landscapes turning into a piece of calligraphy. Telling the fairytale of the dignity of a rock. Mountain peaks on the horizon seemingly flat on top of each other, like a look into the past — or the future? It’s the acceptance of slowness. The cyclical return to the motif. The never-ending quest for perfection while creating a spiritual dimension.

In overall nine thematic sections, the exhibition explores the connection between photography and local artistic traditions while celebrating Kenna’s respect for history, expressed through thorough originality, a sense of refinement, and his effort in careful and thoughtful craftsmanship. Cross-disciplinary parts of the exhibition include, for example, intimate glimpses into the world of print, showcasing the process from the camera to the darkroom. And from the darkroom to the published book. To allow its visitors to fully immerse themselves in Kenna’s captivating landscapes, the Musée Guimet has also produced a podcast, an atmospheric background story consisting of eight episodes that takes you on a journey through some of Kenna’s most emblematic works.

Unfortunately, the exhibition will only be on display until the end of this month. So, if you want to dive into a deeply personal part of Kenna’s fifty-year-long career as a photographer, you have to hurry up — something that fits neither into the world of Haiku, the traditional Japanese form of poetry, nor into Kenna’s non-digital creative legacy.

The exhibition Silver Haikus: Asia Photographed, by Michael Kenna is on view through September 29 at Musée Guimet, 6 Pl. d'Iéna, Paris.