cover

Publisher Note

In life we meet thousands of people, but we make friends only with a few. Why? What forms the bonds of friendship and love? How does a stranger turn into a friend? It happens. My beloved wife Mamta, was born and raised five thousand miles from my family home. When we met, we moved from our countries of origin and lived with different partners five thousand miles away from each other. I think gratitude for these connections is more important than trying to understand why such inexplicable things happen. With the river Po we met for the first time in 2007, when I was invited to Reggio Emilia by the curator Sandro Parmiggiani. In the following years I photographed the territory of Reggio Emilia and my shots became an exhibition exhibited in 2010. My guide at the time was Mauro Lorenzini. Already then I hoped that one day I would return to those places. When I did, years later, I felt like I was in front of an old and wise friend. (...) The Po is ancient and I’m just a fleeting visitor. I have always loved the quote from Heraclitus that says, No man has ever walked twice in the same river because it is not the same river and it is not the same man. I like to apply these concepts to photography. Nothing, myself included, is ever the same. The river flows whether I am there or not, but I think there is a kind of exchange of energy in every encounter. The Po certainly influenced and changed me. I’m not so sure how I changed the Po, except by photographing and exposing the works (...) I prefer my photographs to be closer to poetry than to concrete texts and the color is too specific for the way I work. We see in color all the time, whereas the black and white is an essential reduction of sensory stimulation that allows our imagination to work more.

Photobook

Il Fiume Po

— The Po River

by Michael Kenna

Publisher
Release Place Reggio Emilia, Italy
Edition 1st edition
Release Date 2020
Credits
Artist: Michael Kenna
Identifiers
ISBN-13: 978-88-32116-51-9
Work  
Subform Photobook
Topics Emilia, Landscape, Water
Methods Photography
Language Italian, English
Format hardcover
Dimensions 30.0 × 30.0 cm
Pages 144