Nadav Kander

A famed portraitist for celebrities, Kander’s subjects include sitting presidents such as Barack Obama (2012) and Donald Trump (2016). Both images were featured on the cover of Time magazine’s Person of the Year issues. The portraitist not only depicts the facial features of the sitter, but its personality and even the psychology of the person, such as the white-haired Obama’s seriousness in facing a second term after ceding control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, or Trump’s bellicose trepidation after a surprise landslide victory against Hillary Clinton. In a time when the act of representing others or being represented comes with a series of polemics and responsibilities, Kander’s images are testament to the continued challenges and relevance of photographic portraiture.

After his Prix-Pictet-winning series, Yangtze – The Long River, which photographs the longest river in China, Nadav Kander’s newest work series Dark Line – The Thames Estuary is a three-year photographic series of the Thames, the longest river in the UK. Following the different temporality and topography of the Thames estuary, the artist captures the moving textures of sea-faring waters, low-lying lands and their liminal intersection, which contain traces of human activities and history of the people. The landscape conveys a resonant exterior matched in intensity by a rich inner world, rethinking the human condition of home and belonging, cyclicality and life. The vertical format of the work puts the horizon right in the gaze of the viewer, which becomes a line inviting viewers to step into this connective space.

The fragility of humans runs through Bodies. 6 Women 1 Man., a series of large-scale painterly nude photos that spells the tension between intimacy and objectification. From the vast cityscapes to the dark void that is Kander’s studio, the human subjects are pitted against an isolation in which they negotiate their existence.

An epic portrayal of the Yangtze River and with the river as a metaphor for constant change, Kander captures the riverside landscape and the displacement of its people along its banks from mouth to source in Yangtze, The Long River.