Photobook Review - Sofia Ouhri

Sofia Ouhri

Visual Literacy, Spring 2015

Photobook Review

Kenna, Michael, and Jerome Tarshis. Night Walk. San Francisco: Friends of Photography, 1988.

Published in 1988, Michael Kenna’s Night Walk offers viewers a disconcerting glimpse into the post-industrial English landscape. Growing up in Widnes –considered the seat of British chemical manufacturing – Kenna’s choice of subject matter stemmed from his personal connection to the dark phantom of factory work, dispossession, and desertion. The titular night walk references his practice of photographing exclusively after dusk, and explains why all of the black-and-white images are curiously devoid of human figures. Only the constructs man leaves in his wake are recorded – such as power plants, mills, canals, and so forth. These disused or demolished structures are suggestive of man’s damaging impact on his surroundings, and speak to urbanity’s devastating effects.

Although Kenna avers that the work is “not meant as a political statement,” his decision to conclude the monograph with seven plates depicting smoking power stations leaves the reader with a sense of dystopic dread (Kenna, 12). Compared to the book’s opening photos, – sharp and texture-laden, of foliage and brick and architectural linearity – the hazy, upward-aimed images of the power stations refuse to engage. Rather, they seem to loom over the viewer, erupting smoke and blurring the horizon.

Kenna’s photographs possess an almost surrealist nature. The scenes of Yorkshire and Surrey – all meandering sight lines and wayward diagonals – are reminiscent of a Shel Silverstein poem. This ambiance is reinforced by the juxtaposition of extremely focused details amidst otherwise misty surroundings. In Plate 26, for example, the corrugated tin roof of a warehouse is clearly outlined in the foreground, but a thick shaft of light clouds the skyline beyond. The softness bequeaths a sense of mystery, further emphasized by the luminous lighting. Later images in the monograph share this quality. Slick cobblestone streets reflect the moonlight, while docks, towpaths, chimneys and mills are wonkily rendered with a wide tonal range.

               The dramatic lighting of Kenna’s work (a product of the time of day during which he chose to photograph) regales viewers with high-contrast shadows and an atmospheric effect that is not bleak so much as it is stage-like. Longer exposures yielded star trails in some plates, and streetlights flare bright white in others, but a feeling of disappearing into space, of being lost and disoriented persists: the inability to entirely pinpoint light sources makes the scenes unnerving. In many regards, Kenna’s photographs are about illumination as much as they are English urbanity.