Nadav Kander - The Meeting
Nadav Kander (Born 1961) is the first photographer that I cite in conversation about which practitioner has influenced me the most. He was born in Tel Aviv and based in London, although he does not regard himself to be British. His photographs are a part of the collections at the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum.
Kander began taking pictures at 13 years old with a Pentax camera. In the South African Air Force, he processed film and printed aerial photographs. In 1986, he moved to London where he currently resides with his wife and three children. Portraiture and landscape photography are the main genres that he is best known. I have an appreciation for the consistency in his career, which has traversed 30 years across fine art and commercial platforms. He has photographed celebrities, models and a multitude of other sitters. In 2009, his 52 portraits published in The New York Times Magazine portrayed President Barack Obama and his closest associates. It is the largest portfolio of work that the publication has ever showcased. Later that year, Kander was awarded the prestigious Prix Pictet Earth for Yangtze - The Long River (2008). The shortlist of nominees included Ed Kashi, Andreas Gursky and Naoya Hatakeyama. The list of his other awards is extensive and includes a World Press Photo Award 2013 and 2014, Honorary Fellowship from The Royal Photographic Society 2015 and Outstanding Contribution to Photography from Sony World Photography 2019. (Lens Culture, 2020)
During the World Press Photo Exhibition 2014 at the Southbank Centre, London, I was particularly taken by Kander’s 3rd Prize entry of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. The photograph first appeared in New York Magazine as a staged portrait to commemorate the British actor. Ejiofor, played a black man kidnapped in 19th Century America and sold into the slave trade in the film 12 Years a Slave (2013). He received an Oscar nomination for the role and won Best Actor at the BAFTA awards. Actors have a trained ability to respond to a camera. He appears poised yet relaxed. Kander’s characteristic turquoise key light is apparent with a red back light to highlight the outline of the sitter. The lack of a fill light leaves a proportionate amount of this face in an enigmatic shadow. This low-key lighting design gives the photograph a sombre tone. Emphasis is placed upon Ejiofor’s eyes, which reveals the complexity of his role in the film. As a viewer of the work in person, I felt a closer affinity to the subject when it was close to life sized. Its considered forms had a significant presence akin to a drawing, painting or sculpture. (World Press Photo, 2020)
The Meeting (2019) is a book that acts as a homage to Kander’s career, with photography from his early foray into the genre to illustrious works recognised within the fine art and academic communities. The annotations add insightful anecdotes about each piece and the man himself. The opening, entitled ‘The Triangle’ outlines a relationship of personal interest to me between sitter, photographer and viewer.
‘I don’t photograph to tell stories. I photograph to make stories. The viewer, if they hold their gaze long enough, becomes the author of the work’s meaning.
Consider there’s a metaphorical suitcase packed with white, grey and darker clothing that we carry around with us wherever we go. When we meet someone, we choose what items to show; maybe only clean white shirts, perhaps darker one. This unpacking is symbolic of a meeting. Much like when I work with a sitter. Our stories collide and change depending on the day, the weather, our emotional states.
If I manage to make a portrait that stirs a viewer then they complete what I call ‘The Triangle’ by bringing their own story or state of mind to the picture. This is fundamental to me, but often missed or misunderstood, because photography is still considered by many to be a record of an event. It is that; but it is not only that. How can it be?
Perhaps if we replace the word ‘photographer’ with ‘poet’ the point becomes clear. It is accepted wisdom when it comes to poetry that every individual reader finds his or her own meaning in the poem and this perspective is unique - no more less valid that yours or mine. The same, in my view, is true of photography.’
In email correspondence between 4th and 28th April 2019 with David Campany, Kander describes his photographic process. These extracts resonated with me as a practitioner of portraiture and landscape photography.
NK - I’ve walked down one road since I started photographing when I was 13. I feel I haven’t deviated at all. I still need my work to strike the same chords in me that I’ve always longed and striven for. My photographs (however varied a viewer might find them) come from the same inner place. I seem to revisit a slowed-down reality, which is very beautiful and important to me. Slow, quiet and slightly uneasy, alluding to more going on beneath what you first see. The subconscious need to express what feels meaningful and profound never goes away. I just try many ways to revisit it, to come at it from different directions.
DC - The portraits you’ve made seem to have quite a special place in your work. As if a face, or a person, is a way to get to the tension between surface and depth. I feel the human face is somehow already an image before it’s photographed. It’s already a kind of presentation, or representation of the self, although a very fragile and elusive one.
NK - That is beautifully put! Yes, my photographs of people are an essential part of my practice.
They follow on from my photographing landscape. When first dealing with landscape I realised it wasn’t the natural environment I was after, but the man-altered landscape. I focused on a darker nature, our destructive ambivalence to our surroundings, but I shrouded these scenes in beauty using compositions that, purely from their form, colour and weight, would have an effect on me apart from the information shown.
DC - Portraiture is often thought of as a two-way exchange, between photographer and sitter, but you’ve talked often of the viewer being crucial to meaning. That said, there’s a real intimacy to your portraits, as if these people have been given the freedom to forget their audience momentarily. We viewers can look, without feeling we’re being performed to. Is this how it is?
NK - I’ve had to think a long time about your question. Much of what I do is intuitive so finding the words is difficult. When I’m in front of a person (or a landscape for that matter), there’s nothing in my head that matters. I’m just looking with so much concentration that sometimes it feels as if I might explode. I do not want to be stirred so badly! All I want is for something to show itself, something that if I release the shutter will become an image that will stir me and unsettle me. To get close to this I must direct people very softly, subtly, and create the appropriate light so that they experience something of themselves. Any frivolous act for the viewer will never work; it would appear transparent. It has to be just for them and me. Only once this is successful does the viewer enter and make up the triangle. Artist, subject and viewer - each one a part of the whole.
From beneath the surface beauty, comes an existential call that touches on questions of destiny and the unknown. The works of Hans Bellmer, Man Ray, Raoul Hausmann, Dalí and Hans (Jean) Arp have also had a big influence on me. Although my work is not surreal, the feeling I get from the work of these artists is something I always search for. For example Jean Arp’s sculptures were very informative when I began photographing the nudes that became the series ‘Bodies - 6 Women, 1 Man’.
DC - It’s interesting that you put it that way. Very often I find myself wondering what landscapes your sitters were in just before they came to you, what it was - out there in the world - that is on their mind as you make the photograph.
NK - A portrait is one way of looking at some facets of our condition. There’s a precious and beautiful flicker of understanding, or the opposite, that shows itself for short periods and disappears. These periods, which I must see and try to photograph, are often responses to the light or the atmosphere that the light imbues. I must try to recognise them as an image that has what I love; depth of feeling, vulnerability and poise, pride and soul, a recognition of something more than just this moment now. Little of this clear to me, but this is the best I can do to explain it. (Kander, 2020)
It is an inevitability that a photographer emulates their heroes. Whenever I read that someone like Kander also had starting points for their practice, I am encouraged. I have covered in detail the practitioners that have inspired me for this project - Smith, Andrew, Refn, Sigel and Norwood. There are blog posts committed to each of them. However, I felt that Kander required more substantial meditation. There are parallels between his voice and my own - low key lighting and moody colour saturation delivered with a quiet temperament. He reveals that these attributes are the reflection of triangles that he forms between himself, his sitter and viewer. A sitter may choose to present themselves in any number of ways to his lens then this narrative is open for further interpretation by anyone that encounters his imagery. During his interview with Campany, he explains that he implements soft direction, free of frivolity to search for each photograph. He also explains a slow and quietened reality that he occupies beneath the surface appearance of what he sees.
The Ejiofor portrait inspired me during a formative stage of my photography. There is overlap with the other photographers and cinematographers that I have mentioned. Low key lighting is a continuous theme; however, Kander’s renderings have more depth. He is reluctant for media attention and I found The Meeting (2019) to be highly enlightening. His is the work of a ‘poet’ acting as a ‘photographer’, to use his own metaphor. As an analytical student, I have attempted to dissect what makes Kander, Kander. An awareness of his process is just the beginning. My lighting will resemble his, in addition my direction style is already collaborative instead of dictatorial. Any additional intricacies are unique to his voice. As I develop as a photographer myself, I am hopeful to have as reputable career and recognition. There are plenty more triangles that I am eager to construct.
Kander, N. (2019). The Meeting. London: Steidl
Lens Culture (2020). Biography. Lens Culture. Available from
www.lensculture.com/nadav-kander
World Press Photo (2020). 2014 Photo Contest. World Press Photo. Available from
www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2014/29789/1/2014-Nadav-Kander-PS3
Nadav Kander, Chiwetel Ejiofor, 2014
