Background

Kenna, Michael was born on November 20, 1953 in Widnes, Cheshire, England.

Education

Kenna attended Upholland College in Lancashire, the Banbury School of Art in Oxfordshire, and the London College of Printing.

Career

In the 1980s, he moved to San Francisco and worked as Ruth Bernhard's printer. Since about 1986 he has mainly used Hasselblad medium format and Holga cameras and this accounts for the square format of most of his photographs. The main exception was for the photographs in Monique's Kindergarten for which a 4×5 large format camera was employed.

His work has been shown in galleries and museum exhibitions in Asia, Australia and Europe. He has photographs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Patrimoine photographique in Paris, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His photography of the ruins of concentration camps was featured in the opening credits of the Holocaust film Esther's Diary (2010).

Achievements

• Imogen Cunningham Award (San Francisco, California, USA, 1981)Art in Public Buildings Award (California Arts Council Commission, Sacramento, California, USA, 1987)Institute for Aesthetic Development Award (Pasadena, California, USA, 1989)Golden Saffron Award, (Consuegra, Spain, 1996)Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (Ministry of Culture, France, 2000)Honorary Master of Arts (Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2003).

Works

Works Gallery

• book

  • African Masterworks in the Detroit Institute of Arts

    (This magnificent collection of African art showcases 88 o...)

  • Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens From the Cleveland Art Museum

    (Book by Cunningham, Michael R.)

  • Grass roots art, Wisconsin : toward a redefinition : published on the occasion of the exhibitions at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Nov. 12 to Dec. 30, 1978, Madison Art Center, Jan. 14 to Feb. 28, 1979, Priebe Gallery, UWO, March 18 to April 15, 1979.
  • The Afro-american Tradition In Decorative Arts. By John Michael Vlach. Published by The Cleveland Museum of Art. 1978 Edition

• Other Work

  • One-man shows Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, Wiltshire, England, 1983, Bampton Arts Center, Oxfordshire, 1984, Madison (Wisconsin) Art Center, 1985, Gallery Min, Tokyo, 1987, Fuerte Gallery, Tokyo, 1990, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1991, Cleveland Art Museum, 1992, International Center for Photography, New York, 1993, Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Zurich, 1994, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1995, Nicephore Niepce Museum, France, 1996. Exhibited in group show Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, 1982. Represented in permanent collections Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, San Francisco Museum Modern Art, Fox Talbot Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.