Meditate with Michael Kenna (born in 1953)

The evanescence of morning mists, the mineral hardness of the mountains and the lace in Chinese shadow of surprisingly perched trees. This is an overwhelming natural synthesis which pushes us to the limits of our perception of the world. There, the figure disappears, the abstraction flows.

There is a millennium already, under the era of the Song dynasty (XE -XIIIth century), many Chinese artists had made them their inner quest. From the severe and formatted tools of learned calligraphy – the brush and black ink -, the artists of the court and the others released their gesture by diluting their line, bringing out during their wash of haikus in image.

This pictorial language, the Shui mo Hua, Summit of Asian painting, continues to be emulated centuries later. The work of British photographer Michael Kenna testifies to this. Far from the greyness of the small industrial town in the north of England where he grew up, the man let himself be Happer, over his trips to Japan, in China and everywhere in Asia, by the magic of the blades and twilights in these regions.

The choice of black and white photography has thus been obvious to account for it. Here in the yellow mountains, in eastern China, these granite peaks had already been painted by the artist Shitao, in 1670.

Philosopher artist, this master explained: “I speak with my hand. You listen with your eyes. And we understand ourselves, is it not, in one smile. Here we are very close to the treasures of inner life, where, stoically and with the patience of the painter, the mountains of pride are lowered and the abmes of humiliation filled.