Michael Kenna's "Beautiful Fukushima"

Kostuik Gallery presents Beautiful Fukushima, a new body of work by award-winning British photographer Michael Kenna. The 50 sepia-toned silver gelatin photographs mark fifteen years since the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and stand as a testament to Fukushima's striking recovery in the years since. Kenna's distinctive, contemplative photographic style casts the series as a meditation on place and memory — on what endures, what is renewed, and how landscape and human experience remain bound together over time.

The exhibition debuted in Japan earlier this fall and has since travelled through presentations across Europe and the United States, with Kostuik Gallery marking its arrival in Canada, on view October 15 through November 1, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 15, from 5 to 7pm, artist in attendance.

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.

Beautiful Fukushima runs October 15 through November 1 at Kostuik Gallery, 1070 Homer Street, Vancouver. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10am to 6pm; Saturday, 10am to 5pm; and Sunday, 12pm to 4pm.