Michael Kenna (Widnes, UK, 1953) on March 1, 2024 exposes his vision of Venice, describing it as a mysterious and seductive city of inexhaustible inspiration that not even one life would be enough to capture everything it treasures. He comments that probably the beginning of the platonic passion that Venice inspires in him began in February 1980 when he photographed some mooring posts devoid of boats during the first lights of the morning and by revealing them he found light and darkness and the lines of the boats on a horizon. hidden by fog.
Toni Catany (Llucmajor, 1942-Barcelona, 2013) comments on his personal experience of Venice. He talks about the complexity of capturing sufficiently inspiring images with which viewers can understand the fascination that that place suggests to them, and even more so in a city as reproduced as Venice. In his efforts to show the naked city stripped of clichés, he prefers to get away from the tourist itineraries and get lost in the alleys and photograph the modest houses next to lavish palaces, the churches with opulent interiors, the dead-end alleys or an unexpected image that appears in the breaking a corner.
La Salute, Venice, 1969 / 70. Polaroid transported. Giclée copy, 2024. Photography by Tony Catany. Courtesy of Sala Parés.
Sala Parés presents, Kenna-Catany. Venice, a joint exhibition by the British Michael Kenna (Widnes, UK, 1953) and the Majorcan Toni Catany (Llucmajor, 1942 - Barcelona, 2013) about Venice, a city that both authors photographed for years. The exhibition is made up of almost seventy images and will be open to the public from September 19 to October 19, 2024 in the gallery where they will be exhibited in spaces one where the Venetian series can be seen and in space three where the collection of the dead nature.
This will be Michael Kenna's second exhibition at Sala Parés after El Paisatge del sentiment (2023). On this occasion, the exhibition establishes a dialogue between a selection from the series that the Briton has been making about Venice since 1980 and the photographs that Toni Catany dedicated to the same city. Although Kenna and Catany never met, they admired each other. The confluences between both proposals are constant and, at times, even evident, and denote a shared sensitivity. The convergences, both in the Venetian series and in the still lifes, reveal this invisible link between the two views. Kenna-Catany. Venice is the result of the investigation into the connections between both photographers raised in the exhibition that, titled Michael Kenna, Toni Catany: Confluences, inaugurated the Toni Catany International Photography Center in Llucmajor (Mallorca) in mid-2023.
Sala Parés publishes a catalog in booklet format with a selection of works by both authors.
While walking in February 1980, also early in the morning, I began to photograph some mooring posts, strangely absent from gondolas or other boats. After developing my film a few weeks later, I was delighted to find a frame, made between light and dark, that showed the lines of passing ships, creating a horizon that I couldn't see in the fog (…). “I now believe that this particular image was probably the beginning of my current Venetian photographic odyssey, which continues today.”
Four Lamps Fondamenta Zattere. Venice Italy 2007. Photograph by Michael Kenna. Courtesy of Sala Parés.
More than following the tourist itinerary, I have always liked to get lost in this labyrinth of streets and alleys, of canals with dark or luminous waters, and of bridges that take you to other alleys of modest houses that are next to large palaces, to esplanades. with churches with sumptuous interiors, or dead-end streets that force you to retrace your path; always with the surprise, when turning the corner, of an unexpected vision (...)”.
