Pilgrimage: An Exhibition With Michael Kenna & Yasuhiro Ogawa
opened at the Sheung Wan-based Blue Lotus Gallery on June 6, 2025. The exhibition features two award-winning artists, Michael Kenna and Yasuhiro Ogawa, offering “a tribute to Japan’s cultural and spiritual heritage, inviting viewers to reflect on their own inner journeys across time, memory, and space”. 

The cosy Blue Lotus Gallery focuses on photographic work that brings Asian contemporary culture and heritage to life. When you first walk into the venue, it’s clear that while this is a show featuring two artists with a shared subject matter, they are offering vastly different perceptions. The collection of works, exploring Japanese life and landscapes, are a gorgeous blend of Ogawa’s colourfully vibrant captures and Kenna’s striking black and white scenes.

English photographer Michael Kenna has been photographing Japan for close to forty years, having first visited in 1987. Recalling that visit recently to The South China Morning Post, he said, “I was blown away by the aesthetics, the spiritual and religious aspects, the curiosity of the people and their friendliness”.

Kenna often captures a blend of the natural and man-made elements of Japan’s countryside, and his photographs depict the country’s various pilgrimage sites, including Buddhist temples, Shintō shrines, and venerated mountains. 

Kenna’s work oozes calm and stillness. This makes absolute sense when you learn that his photographs are taken using long exposures, often left overnight, and then developed in his personal darkroom. While he uses patience to his advantage through a lengthy creation process, Kenna also utilises the visual elements of composition, light, and shadow with a deft touch.