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Click to access interview.

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What are you working on at the moment?
I have been working with the New York Times on a portfolio, which will be out in early March I think. I’m also getting ready for a show of my life-sized nudes – a series of nudes of men and women which try to ignore the common perceptions of beauty.

What projects do you like to be involved in?
I would say I do so many different genres of work. There are lots of different types of advertising I would like to do. I would love to do things that involve collaboration with the possibility of a great outcome – collaboration with both agency and client.

Who do you admire most in your industry?
I admire great art directors and writers who with so much heart and positivity go after their ideas and in trying to get them through are so often being thwarted. I admire the persistence and hoops they have to jump through.

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Nadav Kander (right) at the Aral Sea. Photo by Felicity McCabe.

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There needs to be less fearfulness from clients and more trust in good creators doing good work. There is less of a need for the lowest common denominator to understand every ad and be part of every ad. Advertising in magazines would altogether be of a far higher standard if creatives were just trusted more.

What was the last song you listened to?
It was “Sugar on the [sic] Tongue” by Talking Heads.

Read the full interview here.

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Nadav Kander, "Yibin IV, Sichuan Province," 2007. Chromogenic color print. Courtesy Flowers, London.

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Last Thursday, “Yangtze—The Long River,” an exhibition featuring previously unseen photographs from Nadav Kander’s Prix Pictet–winning series, opened at Flowers gallery in London. The show, which will be on view through November 13, coincides with the publication of a comprehensive monograph issued by German book publisher Hatje Cantz. Tomorrow, Flowers will be hosting a conversation between Nadav and Philip Dodd from 7 to 9 pm. For details, visit flowersgalleries.com.

Here’s an excerpt from a review by the British culture site Spoonfed:

“When we arrive at Flowers on Kingsland Road, the place is heaving, as crowds admire Nadav Kander’s mesmerising photographs taken along the course of China’s Yangtze River. Yangtze – The Long River captures the constant urbanisation of life in modern day China. Kander’s images are magnificent; the extraordinary tonal differences between the muted, dense greys and misty bands of thick fog contrast with the fleshy tones of the people which populate them, the bright touches and hues of their clothing pops against the translucent veil of pollution.”

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Nadav (far right) with gallery owner Matthew Flowers (center) on opening night.

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Bill, Maureen, and Stockland Martel photo editor Katya Arsenieva flew to London to attend the opening and to spend time with Nadav, who is fresh off of his epic fund-raising, glutes-testing bike ride to raise funds for two British hospitals (see Nadav Kander’s Bicycle Diaries). Here are a couple of photos they took in his studio, which is in the Kentish Town/Camden area of London…

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Nadav and Maureen review images at Nadav's studio. At left is Felicity McCabe, Nadav's first assistant. Bill is way in the back at the computer, no doubt trying to winnow down the contents of his inbox.

From left: Maureen, Katya, Nadav, Zoe Tomlinson, Nadav's studio manager, and Bill.

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While they were across the pond, Bill, Maureen, and Katya visited several other

Europe-based Stockland Martel photographers, including Jason Hindley…

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Jason Hindley and his wife (and ace studio manager) Keiko at breakfast with Bill and Maureen.

A photo that Keiko took of Bill at the Islington outpost of the famed Ottolenghi restaurant.

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…and Michael Wirth…

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Maureen and Michael Wirth at Ukai Sushi.

Maureen and Bill dining at one of Bill's favorite vegetarian restaurants, near Nadav's studio.

Bill, Katya, and Maureen.

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Bill and Maureen value these opportunities to spend time with the SM photographers who are outside of New York. It’s sort of like visiting with a family member who lives far away—you don’t get to do it as often as you like, but it’s always a fun and special time when you do get together.

Plus, we’re all very proud of Nadav. If you’re not familiar with his “Yangtze” series, here’s some excellent background on it taken from the exhibition’s press release:

 

Nadav Kander made several voyages along the course of China’s Yangtze River, travelling up-stream from mouth to source over a period of three years. Previously unseen photographs from the resulting body of work – ‘Yangtze – The Long River’ – go on display at Flowers from 14 October 2010 to coincide with the publication of a monograph comprising the complete series.

Using the river as a metaphor for constant change Kander attempted at every stage of the journey, to relate and reflect the consequences of the incomprehensible and seemingly unnatural development in modern-day China.

The journey begins at the coastal estuary, where thousands of ships leave and enter each day, and moves past renowned suicide bridges, coal mines and the largest dam in the world – The Three Gorges Dam. Further inland we encounter Chongqing – the fastest-growing urban centre on the planet.

Kander never photographed further than twenty miles from the river itself. In the shadow of epic construction projects we see workers, fishermen, swimmers and even a man washing his motorbike in the river. Dense architecture gives way to mountains in the upper reaches towards the river’s Tibetan source – a sparsely populated area where the stream is mostly broken ice and just ankle deep.

The river is embedded in the consciousness of the Chinese, even those separated from it by thousands of miles. It plays a pivotal role in both the spiritual and physical life of the nation. More people live along its banks than in the USA – one in every eighteen people on the planet. Common man however, appears to have little say in China’s progression and this smallness of the individual is alluded to in Kander’s work.

The photographs are dominated by immense architectural structures where humans are shown as small in their environment. Figures are dwarfed by landscapes of half completed bridges and colossal Western-style apartment blocks that are rapidly replacing traditional Chinese low-rise buildings and houseboats.

Throughout the series, we can almost feel the weight of the humid air and haze of pollution, which Kander describes in muted tones occasionally enlivened by the smallest bright touches of clothing.

Kander responded intuitively to a feeling that China is severing its roots – the resulting landscapes and documentary-inflected fictions weigh the human and environmental cost of China’s often brutal, dehumanizing shift from state-controlled communism to state-sanctioned capitalism.

Nadav Kander said: “The photographs are an emotional response to what I saw. I gave them simple titles so that viewers are encouraged to respond subjectively before seeking the facts.”

Kander’s China is a country both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself, and one that inspired him to create works of sublime, soulful art.

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Related:

• Previously Unseen Images by Photographer Nadav Kander on View at Flowers

• “The Yangtze: Rapids Ahead,” a feature by Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s Asia correspondent, published in the Weekend magazine

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“For many years, Kander’s photographs have been an integral part of distinguished collections such as those of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London,” Camera Work notes in the press release. “It is our special honor to present parts of his versatile work for the first time in form of a double exhibition.

“Under the title ‘Selected,’ the gallery presents powerful portraits of artists and well-known figures as well as a variety of landscape series such as ‘Colour Fields,’ ‘God’s Country,’ and ‘Arctic Circle,’” the release goes on to explain. “The gallery exhibition will be expanded by the presentation of ‘Obama’s People’ at the museum The Kennedys.”

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Felicity McCabe, who assists Nadav, was at both openings and sent us some images, as did photographer Christoph Michaelis.

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These are from the museum The Kennedys:

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Nadav Kander, Bill Stockland, and Maureen Martel. Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

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“The portraits of members of the Obama administration, originally produced for The New York Times, form a series, which has been highly praised internationally,” notes Camera Work. “The series was printed in the German magazine Stern, among others, and illustrates Kander’s exceptional talent of highlighting characteristic traits of the figures displayed.

“The unpracticed self-staging of the persons depicted, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi excepting, leads to an interesting interaction with the camera and thus to portraits of high authenticity. ‘Obama’s People’ is juxtaposed with Richard Avedon’s legendary 1976 series ‘The Family,’ which depicts all the players in the electoral campaigns of President Gerald Ford and his contender Jimmy Carter in a way hitherto unparalleled.”

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Bill, Maureen, Nadav, and Camera Work gallery manager Steffi Schulze. Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

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And these are from the Camera Work gallery opening of “Nadav Kander: Selected”:

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Ute Hartjen, a member of Camera Work's board of directors, with Nadav. Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Photograph by Felicity McCabe.

Bill. Photograph by Christoph Michaelis.

Nadav. Photograph by Christoph Michaelis.

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