Nadav Kander Yangtze - The Long River

Nadav Kander

From the press release of the exhibition at Flowerseast Gallery.  

'Nadav Kander photographed several voyages along China’s Yangtze River, travelling up-stream from mouth to source over a period of three years.  The river is a metaphor for the extensive change China is going through.  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 “

These are large scale images, evoking a melancholic response to a country that attempts to have only one voice - that of the state.  I felt a sense of powerlessness looking at them, mindful of the small figures in relation to the large structures and signs of 'progress' in the midst of all the air pollution.  


There is a recording of Kander talking and he states quiet clearly how he hates the words: shoot, take, snap - he MAKES his pictures.  

Robert