From October 18, 2025, to January 25, 2026, the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre is hosting a grand retrospective dedicated to Michael Kenna. “Constellation” reveals 124 black and white silver prints by the British master, inviting viewers on a contemplative journey between the visible and the invisible.
For over fifty years, Michael Kenna has traveled the world with his analog camera, in search of moments suspended in time. Born in 1953 in a small industrial town in northern England, he has made light and silence his traveling companions. The exhibition “Constellation” brings together 124 works from a corpus of over 4000 prints, tracing a sensitive path through the landscapes of northern England, the factories of Detroit, the foggy French coasts, the temples of Japan, and the solitary trees of Korea.
The photographer often works at dawn or night, with exposure times reaching up to ten hours. This extraordinary patience gives birth to landscapes where time seems to have stopped. The complete absence of humans accentuates this impression of eternity: the world becomes trace, memory, silence. On the ground floor of the museum, visitors discover photographs of Europe and the United States; upstairs, the journey continues in Asia and Oceania, territories where the photographer finds a form of spirituality.
Between visible and invisible: Photography as meditation
Michael Kenna conceives each photograph as a dialogue with nature. His long exposures transform reality into a dreamlike vision: a tree becomes calligraphy, a cloud blends into a veil. In his darkroom, the artist finds an almost sacred ritual. This moment of developing is for him a religious, meditative experience, lived in total silence. The photographer shapes his images like a time artisan: blacks become velvet, whites evaporate. Developing is not just a simple technical step but a second writing, as essential as the shot itself.
Influenced by Shintoism and Zen Buddhism, Kenna cultivates an aesthetic of emptiness and slowness. His encounter with Japan in 1987 marked a turning point: he discovered a minimalist beauty, made of balance and restraint. In his images, emptiness becomes a breathing space, a place where the eye and the soul meet.
An exceptional donation and a strong connection with Nice
In 2022, Michael Kenna donated his entire photographic work to the French State: nearly 3700 original prints and over 175,000 negatives, now preserved by the Media Library of Heritage and Photography. This extraordinary gesture demonstrates a deep trust in French institutions.
The artist also has a particular connection with Nice: already invited in 1997 for the exhibition “10 Photographers and a City“, he captured the soul of the Azurean city at that time. On the occasion of Constellation, four new works join the collections of the Charles Nègre museum, extending this dialogue between the artist and the Niçoise light.
