MICHAEL KENNA

Ratcliffe Power Station, 1984-2003

December 1, 2004 - January 15, 2005

BIOGRAPHY

PRESS RELEASE

San Francisco Chronicle, December 25, 2004

Featured is imagery of the eight towers of the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station that dominates the sky in Nottinghamshire, England, not tremendously far from Michael Kenna’s birthplace of Widnes, Lancashire. Kenna first began photographing the power station in the early 1980s, and over the past several years he has visited the site many times, producing a body of work as ominous as it is beautiful. The Ratcliffe photographs take on the tonal quality of a partially lit ecosphere unique to the photographer and his subject. A brilliant manipulator of half-light, Kenna’s grainy, spatial topography epitomizes the gray skies of Northern England that were the ubiquitous backdrop to his childhood. Both menacing and seductive, Kenna’s Ratcliffe photographs create the impression of an atmospherically foggy day, registering the homeostasis of a mood that is a dominant characteristic of his work.