Living in the World One would be hard-pressed to identify people in the photographs of Michael Kenna. Yet, humanity occupies a central place in his work through the traces of its activities left in the landscape. The photographer thus represents different ways of living in the world, ranging from a discreet presence in harmony with nature to a total occupation of space, including spiritual practice. Human activities hold an important place in the iconography of Asian arts. In Japan, while the ukiyo-e prints (17th-19th century) chronicle the social, cultural, and economic life of urban centers, decorative arts such as maki-e (lacquer and metallic powders) offer a more poetic and indirect evocation of human occupations. Finally, the traces of piety photographed by Michael Kenna respond, in the religious arts of Hindu and Buddhist Asia, to the codified and reassuring gestures of divinities.

Coexistence
The interaction between humans and their environment is a favored subject for Michael Kenna. The artificial structures placed in the landscape are to him like theater scenes before or after a performance, capable of stimulating either the imagination or the memory of the spectator. This evocation of the spatial and temporal off-screen of the work, what Michael Kenna calls "the presence of absence," is frequent in the iconography of Japanese decorative arts.

Musée national des arts asiatiques
Commissariat de l’exposition
Edouard de Saint-Ours, Curator of photographic collections, Guimet Museum, Paris

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