Ethereal landscapes captured on a Holga, a made-in-Hong-Kong toy camera, by Michael Kenna

We’re talking about photography, specifically his latest book, Holga, which features years’ worth of pictures taken with the so-called “toy camera” of the same name that was conceived in Hong Kong in the 1980s. But, as is often the case with Kenna and his photography, bigger subjects – such as life, nature and God – are rarely far from the forefront.

For more than 40 years, Kenna has been taking mini­malistic, black-and-white photographs of everything from religious sites to empty factories and abandoned piers. Mostly, though, he’s famous for landscapes, and even in today’s digital world of smart­phones and social media, he uses film cameras, often wandering alone in cities or the countryside at night.

Kenna prefers not to be in total control of his photography, allowing accidents to hap­pen as he attempts to capture the “unseen”, which hints at the supernatural, sacred or spiritual.

“When you photograph a tree or a mountain,” he says, “there has to be some sort of exchange of energy and sense of life in what you’re photographing.”

While Kenna started using Hasselblad cameras about four decades ago, working with Holgas injected new life into his photo­graphy.