Nadav Kander was born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1961, relocating with his family to South Africa in 1963. Largely a self-taught photographer, Kander moved to London in 1982 to further his artistic career. His series <em>Yangtze, The Long River</em>, taken along the Yangtze River in China earned him the prestigious Prix Pictet in 2009. Kander is renowned for his portraiture and large-format landscape photographs and his work appears in publications including <em>New York Magazine</em> and <em>Rolling Stone</em>.
Photographer Nadav Kander was born in Tel Aviv, Israel on 1 December 1961. After his father, an airline pilot, lost the sight of one eye, the family relocated to South Africa, settling in Johannesburg in 1963. Kander had no formal training in photography but began to take photographs at the age of 13, using a Pentax camera acquired with money from his Bar Mitzvah, and from looking deeply into the work of pioneering international photographers, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Eugene Atget. When he was 14, Kander began working with renowned South African photographer Harry De Zitter, who told him that if he wanted to pursue photography, he should apprentice himself to someone in the UK. Leaving school in his late teens, Kander was conscripted into national service. He chose the airforce and was fortunate enough to be employed in a darkroom, printing aerial photographs.
Kander moved to London in 1982 to further his career and because of the atmosphere in South Africa: ‘I grew up with this injustice all around me, Apartheid was in everyone’s bones’ (artist’s website). He later recalled that at that time, ‘England was absolutely at the center of the craft of photography and […] it was the center of the commercial world. It was an amazing time – the V&A had started collecting the advertising being made. I didn't know anyone in London but decided to give it a try and ended up working for a photographer called Peter Hopkins for a while. By 24, 1 had set out on my own’. Kander worked on advertising campaigns for brands such as Gordons Gin and Benson & Hedges early in his career, and soon became one of the world's most celebrated advertising photographers, picking up Art Director's Club and IPA prizes in the USA.
Latterly, Kander has become renowned for his portraiture and large-format landscape photographs, exhibiting regularly with Flowers Gallery, the London venue which represents him. He has also held solo shows with Michael Hoppen Gallery, London and presented his Selected Portraits 1999 – 2011 at The Lowry, Manchester (2011). In 2008 he exhibited the series Yangtze, The Long River, taken along the Yangtze River in China at Flowers. Kander explained that ‘Using the river as a metaphor for constant change, I have photographed the landscape and people along its banks from mouth to source […] I worked intuitively, trying not to be influenced by what I already knew about the country’ (Creative Review, p. 11). The series was a representation of his own emotional response to his journeys, rather then a documentary. The restless atmosphere he captured in the photographs reflected his feeling that China was destroying its heritage and the natural environment, while also expressing the solidarity he felt with the migrant workers whose rootlessness mirrored his own. The series earned him the prestigious Prix Pictet in 2009, an international award for photography and sustainability, and in the same year he was named International Photographer of the Year at the 7th Annual Lucie Awards. In 2009 the New York Times devoted an entire issue to Obama’s People, his 52 portraits of President Obama’s inaugural administration. In 2012 Kander was commissioned by Time magazine to photograph President Barack Obama for their Person of the Year 2012 cover and HRH Prince Charles for their November 2013 cover. In the same year he exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, showing a series of portraits celebrating London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympics. His on-going series Dark Line – The Thames Estuary, first shown at Flowers in 2017, continues to focuses on the point where England's longest river meets the sea. Travelling to the estuary alone over a period of time, engaging in his process of slow photography, Kander explores the cycle of the river, as well as its historical and mystical implications. Arranged in diptych or triptych formats, the photographs evoke a sense of departure, loss and longing. The obscure, uncertain horizons and the often desolate images present a Thames that is sometimes violent, sometimes still. Kander's work has appeared in publications including New York Magazine, Rolling Stone and Garage Magazine, among others.
Nadav Kander's work is held in UK public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland. Nadav Kander continues to live and work in London, England.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Nadav Kander]
Publications related to [Nadav Kander] in the Ben Uri Library