Nadav Kander
Nadav Kander moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, when he was three. He began photographing at an early age and moved to London in 1985. Kander is an internationally renowned portrait photographer, and a photographic artist who works in series. Combining biography, landscape, and history, his projects features diverse subject matters, including rivers in China and England, and radioactive ruins in Ukraine and Russia. His works often reflect the outer surroundings of a place, and more importantly the inner conditions of the people.
In 2009, he was awarded the Prix Pictet for Yangtze, The Long River series. His work has been exhibited at major institutions and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, USA (2015), Barbican Centre (2014) and National Portrait Gallery in London, UK (2012), in addition to solo exhibitions at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2014) and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France (2005).
Kander currently lives and works in London, UK.
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Solitary Portraits / 2012-2016
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.
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Dark Line —The Thames Estuary / 2015
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.
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Bodies. 6 Women, 1 Man / 2010-14
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.
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Yangtze, The Long River / 2006-09
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.
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