Michael Kenna, from altar boy to photographer
The British landscape photographer confesses he once wanted to become a priest – until he discovered girls
I was born and brought up in Widnes, England. It was a poor, working class, Catholic family. I was the youngest of five children and we all slept and basically lived in one little room. I spent a lot of time in the local parks, in the train station ... I lived a lot in my own imagination. I was fascinated with the Catholic Church. I became an altar boy, so I was around for some of the great rituals of life – baptisms, weddings, funerals – very early on. After the ceremonies, I could still smell the incense, and there was always this light on the altar, depicting an unseen god.
When I was 10, I decided I wanted to be a priest. I went to a Catholic seminary school for seven years. I learned about silence, discipline, meditation, and it broadened my perspective a lot. Of course, I reached puberty and realised girls existed: I wasn’t sure that celibacy was my thing. I was pretty good at doodling, drawing, so I went to art school. They didn’t have career guidance then: you were a Catholic priest, or you were not. There, I came across photography – it seemed an ideal medium, I could be a professional and earn some money. So I studied photography for three years at London College of Printing.
MY DIANA The first time I picked up a camera, I was about 13. It was a Diana. I still work with a Holga sometimes – a wonderful, cheap little plastic camera, made in Hong Kong. Most of the time I use Hasselblad cameras on tripods, but these Holga cameras have a certain whimsical quality, which I love.
After art school I went to a commercial photography school and studied all the technical aspects of photography. Meanwhile, I kept my passion – being out alone in the landscape, looking and photographing – to myself. I worked as an advertising assistant, then at the John Hillelson photographic agency, on Fleet Street. It was a Magnum, Sygma, Gamma agency and my job was to sell photographic news to the newspapers.
My first exhibition was in a group show in New York, but it was colour work. Eventually I began to take the black and white work into galleries and I took all the colour work out. I remember when I had to give my first lecture, I was so terrified I just sat in the audience and mumbled to myself. I’ve been photographing now for well over 40 years, so I have stories I can tell. But when you’re just starting, what do you talk about? You’re still finding out yourself. It’s very hard to exhibit your work and take it seriously, or you take it too seriously.
