Rare Books
Confessionali
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Monique's kindergarten
Rare Books
"Michael Kenna's photographs from the Waldorf kindergarten are a homage to childhood and a paean to the imaginative potential of children's play. He came to know the kindergarten and Monique Grund first as a parent of his daughter, Olivia, and then as an artist who saw in the stuff of the place an emblematic presentation of the spirit of childhood. The images are the result of many sessions over several years in the kindergarten"--From introduction.
653099
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Impossible to forget : the Nazi camps fifty years after
Rare Books
"Michael Kenna photographed Nazi concentration and extermination camps from 1988 to 2000, subsequently donating all negatives, prints and their respective rights to the French Government and the Caen Memorial. Kenna first visited the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France in 1986. Two years later he returned, still marked by the initial emotional impact, no doubt the key to his decision to develop a project about the Holocaust. Since then, he has repeatedly returned to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Lublin-Majdanek, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald and many other camps to photograph their restless emptiness. Overwhelmed by the abomination of the gas chambers and by the inexpressible suffering of the victims, Kenna wanted to share a memory that he found impossible to forget. Knowing that a work of art can be an invitation to meditation, he went to the concentration camps to photograph what they had become: sites of contemplation. The photographs in 'Impossible to Forget' are directly opposed to the evil that continues to live in the camps, to nihilism and to revisionism; they are bearers of peace and compassion"--Publisher's description.
653188
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Retrospective two
Rare Books
"How can a sustained thirty-year career be an aberration? This is a time of turbulence and edge, but should we dismiss someone who knows that and yet consciously chooses to make pictures that offer order, harmony, and respite? The energy that critics may wish to be in his work is expended in the doing, in the creation of over a dozen separate, coherent projects and thousands of single images. With the same discipline that he applies to long distance running, Kenna distills and refines. He is not turning off his critical faculties, but rather employs them to pay homage. The rebel in Kenna responds, 'I derive so much satisfaction from photography precisely because I've had the luxury of not caring what the art world thinks of my work. I have been able to use the medium as a way to help choose my personal journey or pilgrimage through this life. Most of the places I've photographed I chose because I wanted to acknowledge them and indeed pay homage to them...I haven't tried to be different or break any rules. I couldn't care less what the rules are anyway.'"--From introduction.
653194
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Ratcliffe Power Station
Rare Books
"Kenna's first photographs of the Ratcliffe power station were made in the early 1980s. They show dense emissions of smoke and steam interacting with clouds to form an almost undifferentiated chiaroscuro. I would describe the feel of Kenna's Ratcliffe project as crepuscular, in that the photographs invariably take on the tonal quality of a partially lit ecosphere peculiar to the photographer and his subject. Kenna is a brilliant manipulator of half-light. HIs grainy, spatial topography brings to mind the grey skies of Northern England that were the ubiquitous backdrop to his childhood. Kenna's Ratcliffe photos create the impression of an atmospherically foggy day. They register the homeostasis of a mood that is a dominant characteristic of this work"--From introduction.
653193
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Mont St Michel
Rare Books
"Viewed from a distance, Mont St Michel is like a shimmering mirage, an island of calm, delicately floating on barely moving water. Up close, it can transform itself into a massive earthbound rock, surrounded and engulfed by cars, buses and swarming tourists. Like life, Mont St Michel is what you make of it. Its many facets are open to interpretation and personal experience"--From introduction.
653196
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The judges declared : manuscript
Manuscripts
A manuscript in English, with slight staining. Original note of transfer states: "Removed from duplicate discarded ; i.e. former acc. no. 97062, Bridgewater 43/F20." The discarded book (RB 97062) was William Camden's Tomus alter et idem, or, The historie of the life and reigne of that famous princess, Elizabeth, printed in London in 1629; it was discarded on January 4, 1941.
mssHM 83589