Beautiful Fukushima is a new body of work by internationally acclaimed photographer Michael Kenna. Comprising 50 sepia-toned silver gelatin photographs, the series reflects on Fukushima’s remarkable resilience 15 years after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011. First presented in Japan this fall, the exhibition is now traveling internationally, with presentations across Europe and the United States, before arriving at Kostuik Gallery in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Through Kenna’s distinctive, contemplative photographic language, Beautiful Fukushima offers a quiet meditation on place, memory, renewal, and the enduring relationship between landscape and human experience.
Available for purchase is a limited edition mini-collotype portfolio of the Fukushima series hand printed presented in a beautiful sleeve.
The portfolio comprises seven specially selected Michael Kenna images that reveal the Fukushima of today, including the sunrise over Inawashiro Lake—renowned for having some of the clearest water in Japan—and Terushima Island, which floats in the sea approximately 250 meters off the coast.
Portfolio Dimensions: 10 x 8 x .5 inches / 25.8 x 20.6 x .08 cm
Image Dimensions: 4.8 x 4.8 inches / 12.4 x 12.4 cm
Publisher: Benrido Inc.
Price: $94.50 CAD (includes GST)
I should state openly that for me, and perhaps for many others, the word Fukushima far too easily kindles dark memories of fifteen years ago, when we all held our breath, waiting, frightened, sad, but hopeful. It is difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate these images of Fukushima from our collective memory. I cannot help associating the prefecture with kintsugi, the centuries-old Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics by mending fractures with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. I also think of the mythological phoenix, an immortal, legendary bird that is reborn from its own ashes. Both metaphors seem appropriate for the remarkable regeneration of Fukushima. Michael Kenna
Biography:
As an internationally collected photographer, this exhibition marks the latest chapter in a body of work spanning five decades. Kenna has published 47 books of his photography, with work held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others. In 2022, France’s Minister of Culture named Kenna an Officier des Arts et des Lettres, an honour that placed his life archive — more than 3,600 original prints and an astounding 175,000 negatives spanning 43 countries — in the permanent collection of the French State.