El Hokkaido de Michael Kenna (subtitulado en español) (Parte 1)

Summary of the video (Subtitles)

Michael Kenna discusses photographing in Hokkaido, emphasizing how the winter atmosphere reshapes perception. Snow muffles sound and distractions, creating a quiet, meditative space that feels like a blank canvas. He frames his work as spiritually “magnetic,” rooted in the landscape’s accumulated memories—its stories and human traces over centuries.

He seeks environments altered by both people and nature, but his own vision favors an intimate, “domesticated” wildness rather than raw wilderness.

Kenna describes building a visual “language” from repeating landscape elements. He returns to motifs such as:

• single trees with distinctive character
• fence posts with graphic qualities
• snow barriers that can resemble musical notes and scales

He “wanders around,” reading these marks and sometimes pushing them toward abstraction. His process is iterative: he begins with hundreds of variations/marks and reduces them down to a smaller set—about three by the end.

In the field, he explains how he decides what to photograph. Even when focusing on a single tree, he may spend an hour or two working so he doesn’t repeat the same shot, but instead experiments with:

• angles
• composition
• lenses
• shutter speeds

He also contrasts technical approaches in snowstorms:

• Fast shutter speeds create a “staccato” effect, where snow appears as distinct dots.
• Long exposures—his tendency—make snow blur into a mist or veil, producing results the eye doesn’t quite see in real time.

He extends this approach to moving subjects, including water, aiming for images shaped by the unpredictability of photography. He describes the experience of receiving a finished print as discovery—similar to “opening a Christmas present.”

Artistic techniques, concepts, and creative processes shown

• Atmosphere-driven landscape photography: using winter silence and snowfall to create minimal, meditative scenes.
• Memory- and story-based composition: choosing places shaped by time and human presence, then translating those feelings into images.
• Graphic abstraction from natural motifs:
  • trees as singular “characters”
  • fence posts as linear forms
  • snow barriers as musical or scaled patterns
• Iterative refinement: starting with “hundreds” of variations and distilling toward a small final set (about three).
• In-field experimentation using:
  • multiple angles
  • different compositions
  • different lenses
  • different shutter speeds
• Exposure strategy in snow:
  • fast exposure → visible dot-like snow / staccato rhythm
  • long exposure → mist/veil abstraction beyond direct perception
• Embracing unpredictability: allowing unexpected events during exposure to shape the final result.
• Discovery through processing: the final image reveals itself through exposure, development, and printing.

Creators or contributors mentioned

• Michael Kenna (primary speaker)