Nadav Kander – The edge of things

The first retrospective survey of celebrated contemporary photographer Nadav Kander, supported by an internationally touring exhibition. Master image-maker Nadav Kander has made some of the most important contributions to modern photography. Over the past three decades, he has turned his lens on everyone from Barack Obama to Tracey Emin, and on landscapes from Chernobyl to Death Valley, with an eye for the psychologically complex. From a photographer who seldom chooses to look back, this publication offers a rare chance to view highlights from across Kander’s variegated portfolio, edited and with an introduction by renowned curator, David Campany, and an essay by critic Lou Stoppard. Born in Tel Aviv and raised in South Africa, Kander’s first professional work as a photographer was for the South African Air Force, where he spent long periods in darkrooms mastering the techniques of his photographic idols; Strand, Stieglitz, Weston and Atget. Kander's tireless commitment to stylistic and technical experimentation, combined with a deeply held appreciation for the fragility of the human condition, has created photographs both compelling and uncanny, epic and intimate. This elegant publication coincides with an internationally touring retrospective of Kander’s work opening at Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam, which includes highlights from across his career, interweaving his portraiture, personal projects and landscape photography, including his Prix Pictet-winning series of the Yangtze river. The book collects work from across the extent of Kander’s oeuvre and traces the links throughout: the delicacy of human existence, the passing of time, the grain of the everyday and the hope for something transcendent.