Yangtze, The Long River, Nadav Kander's photography

Nadav Kander Yangtze, The Long River

Chongqing XI, 2007

Mouth I (Wusongkou, Where River Meets Sea), 2006

Changxing Island I (Island of Oranges), 2006

Shanghai I, 2006

Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic), 2006

Chongqing VII, (Washing Bike), 2006

Bathers, Yibin, Sichuan, 2007

Construction Mound, 2006

Fallen Bridge II, 2007

Frozen River, 2007

Artist statement

The Yangtze River, which forms the premise to this body of work, is the main artery that flows 4100 miles (6500km) across China, travelling from its furthest westerly point in Qinghai Province to Shanghai in the east. The river is embedded in the consciousness of the Chinese, even for those who live thousands of miles from the river. It plays a significant role in both the spiritual and physical life of the people.

More people live along its banks than live in the United States – one in every eighteen people on the planet.

Using the river as a metaphor for constant change, I have photographed the landscape and people along its banks from mouth to source. Importantly for me, I worked intuitively, trying not to be influenced by what I already knew about the country. I wanted to respond to what I found, felt, and to seek out the iconography that allowed me to frame views that make the images unique to me.

After several trips to different parts of the river, it became clear that what I was responding to and how I felt whilst being in China was permeating into my pictures; a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself. China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past in the wake of the sheer force of its moving ‘forward’ at such an astounding and unnatural pace: a people scarring their country and a country scarring its people.

I felt a complete outsider and explained this pictorially by ‘stepping back’ and showing humans dwarfed by their surroundings. Common man has little say in China’s progression and this smallness of the individual is alluded to in the work.

Although it was never my intention to make documentary pictures, the sociological context of this project is very important and ever present.

The displacement of three million people in a 600km stretch of the river, and the effect on humanity when a country moves towards the future at pace, are themes that will inevitably be present within the work.

A Chinese man who I became friends with whilst working on the project reiterated what many Chinese people feel: Why do we have to destroy to develop? He explained how in Britain many of us could revisit the place of our childhood, knowing that it will be much the same; it will remind us of our families and upbringing. In China that is virtually impossible, the scale of development has left most places unrecognisable, Nothing is the same. We can’t revisit where we came from because it no longer exists.

China’s landscape both economically and physically is changing daily. These are photographs that can never be taken again.

About the photographer

Born

1961, Tel Aviv, Israel

Nationality

Israeli

Based in

London, United Kingdom

About Nadav Kander

Nadav Kander is recognised as one of the most original and highly regarded photographers of our time. His work forms part of the public collection at the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Kander was born in Israel but grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. He began photographing at thirteen and later, when drafted into the South African Air Force, worked in the darkroom printing aerial photographs. He moved to London in 1986, where he lives with his wife, Nicole and their three children.

His work appears in publications including The Sunday Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Another Man and Dazed & Confused. In 2009, The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Obama’s People, his fifty-two portraits of President Obama’s inaugural administration.

Exhibitions include Obama’s People at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2009), Yangtze From East to West at Flowers Gallery, London (2008), Shanghai Art Museum, China (2006) and Keep your Distance at the Palais de Tokyo (2005).

Kander has received numerous awards from the D&AD and the John Kobal Foundation in the United Kingdom; Epic in Europe, Art Director’s Club and IPA in the United States. He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s ‘Terence Donovan’ Award in 2005 and 2007. He was also recently awarded the Silver Photographer of the Year Award at Lianzhou International Photo Festival 2008 in China.

Nadav Kander is represented by Flowers Gallery in London and Pekin Fine Arts in Beijing.

Books: Beauty’s Nothing (2001), Night (2003).