Michael Kenna: Holga Hardcover – March 6, 2018

The media could not be loaded.  It's very rare that I pre-order anything. I mean it's rare that I know about something in advance in general, but normally I'm just like, meh, I'll get it when I get it. Not in this instance.I've been a Michael Kenna fan forever. His surreal images are timeless. They're inspiring. They're haunting. And they're not easily duplicated. His work is very easily identifiable and I absolutely love it.Similarly, I absolutely adore the Holga and the weird, jacked-up pictures that it produces. If you're here reading this, you very likely know what I referring to, and if not, a quick google search will do the job.Since Michael typically shoots with a Hasselblad, I was elated to find out that he was creating a book done with a Holga. That's like finding out Scarlett Johansson also makes homemade ice cream and blows kisses into each tub she sells. Yes please.In typically Michael Kenna style, all B+W images, all still haunting, all still incredible. Production value is very high and if you're a Kenna or a Holga fan, you should purchase this book and place it somewhere you can reference often. Thank you for such a piece of inspirational work.

No matter your skill level, gear or type of photography, this is a must read! Michael Kenna take’s us on an around the World adventure with a simple camera, capturing beautiful elements along the way. This is as much a photography book as it is an art book and a travel album. I regularly dip in to the pages of this master piece for inspiration!

Heard about this book on the film photography project podcast. Glad I did as would have not looked for the book otherwise. Kenna is an artist and proves you don't need an expensive camera to make great photography. I will be dusting off my two original Diana's again thanks to the inspiration provided by the images in this book.

Wonderful photography, a testimony to the million of photographers who think that a better, more expensive "gigapixel" camera will help to improve their photography.

A well put-together and curated selection of photographs from a master. Very enjoyable and inspirational book.

So beautiful photos!

This book is beautiful and shows that the images come from the vision of the photographer, not the camera. While the Holga is instrumental in creating a certain look, the photographer chooses the framing and the feel of the light... lovely book, and a celebration of calm, beautiful imagery.

I had a difficult time with these photographs. Each frame contains a certain uncomfortable tension. It is as if within each image, a clean and sensitively composed subject awaits to break free from the Holga aesthetic. I would recommend one of Mr. Kenna's other offerings such as Forms of Japan instead of this title.

Increíble que con una cámara casi de juguete haya obtenido estas imágenes.

Dieses kurze Zitat aus dem Vorwort beschreibt sehr treffend die starke Suggestionskraft der hier versammelten Fotos. Die geschmackvolle Reihenfolge, Gegenüberstellung und Druckgröße der Bilder lassen das Durchblättern dieses Bandes zu einer üngetrübten Freude werden. Leider ist ausgerechnet das Coverfoto wohl das konventionellste und schwächste des ganzen Bandes. Durch ihren minimalistischen Charakter lassen die Fotos sehr viel Raum für die Fantasie des Betrachters. Das deuten oft schon die knappen Bildtitel an ("window seat", "four birds flying", "half a head"). Das Buch ist allemale seinen Preis wert. Wer Lust hat, mag noch zwei Zitate aus Thomas Manns Tristan-Novelle lesen, die Kennas Ästhetik recht gut treffen. ("Ich bin dieser Sonne, die Schönes und Gemeines mit gleich aufdringlicher Deutlichkeit bestrahlt, geradezu dankbar, daß sie sich endlich ein wenig verhüllt." "...habe ich eine schöne Frau gesehen... Gott, sie war schön! ... Ich habe die Dame im Vorübergehen nur mit einem halben Blicke gestreift, ich habe sie in Wirklichkeit nicht gesehen. Aber der verwischte Schatten von ihr, den ich empfing, hat genügt, meine Phantasie anzuregen und mich ein Bild mit fortnehmen zu lassen, das schön ist ... Gott, es ist schön" (Herr Spinell).

The Holga is a “toy” camera, originally made in Hong Kong in the early 1980s. It uses 120 medium format film, making photos at 6 x 4.5 cm or 6 x 6 cm. It’s a crappy camera, and is widely appreciated for its form of shabby chic. With the high quality of digital photography these days, using a Holga and it’s low-fi lens, is a rejection of perfection.If there’s one photographer whose photos exhibit perfection it’s Michael Kenna. His often long-exposure landscapes have an aura of stillness and mystery, but they are compositionally perfect.But Kenna keeps a Holga camera with him alongside his Hasselblads (film, not digital). In the introduction to this book, he is quoted as saying, “I’ve always considered the make and format of a camera to be ultimately low on the priority scale when it comes to making pictures.” He often shoots a few photos with the Holga while working with his Hasselblads, and in this book, you can see some subjects that will be familiar if you have seen his other work.The Holga is the brutalist camera. It’s poor-quality lens suffers from vignetting, soft focus, and everything else that photographers prize. To quote the much-repeated mantra of photographer David DuChemin, “Gear is good, but vision is better.” This new book by Michael Kenna is the best justification I have seen of that sentence.The book contains about 150 black and white photos, with the typical silver-gelatin look of Kenna’s other work. The low-fi nature of the photos is immediately evident, especially the vignetting, but you quickly move past that and focus on the composition of these photos. None of them are complex; Kenna seems to take more immediately apparent photos with the Holga than some of his broader landscapes, and most subjects are centered in the square frame. Some are quick snapshots catching birds in flight, planes, or views from a train. Others are more carefully composed shots such as this one of the Kussharo Lake Tree, that he shot many times over a period of years.Many of the photos are almost reductive in their simplicity, but don’t fall into the trap of the “minimalist” black and white photography that is prevalent these days.This book features many of the same types of subjects that Kenna is known for: lone trees, statues, posts in water, but there are some animals, and even a baby elephant, but no people. Kenna’s world is stark, and could be that of a time when all humans have disappeared. Or perhaps it’s the vision of what a world without humans might look like. With the subtle aberrations of the Holga camera, Michael Kenna shows a world that is beautiful in its imperfections.

Ce Kenna là est sublime aussi. Il s’agit de photos prises avec un appareil argentique bas de gamme au rendu aléatoire (et à lentille plastique !) que j’adore eta je j’utilise aussi. Là où l’on voit que Kenna est un artiste professionnel c’est que malgré la faible qualité de l’appareil, le cadrage est toujours maîtrisé, la profondeur de champ juste (ce qui est à mon sens le plus compliqué avec un Holga !).Il est intéressant d’en voir les sujets, toujours sans humain. Des clichés parfois touristiques, mais un peu décalés. Et cet angle toujours en plongée ou en contre plongée (le building et les nuages !), à moins l’équilibre ne s’agissent D’arbres d’esseulés.Ce livre est une splendeur poétique. À recommander à tout le monde ... pour peu qu’on soit anglophone...