Nadav Kander is a London based photographer, artist and director, internationally renowned for his portraiture and landscapes. His work forms part of the public collection at the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Kander’s work is also exhibited in numerous international galleries and museums.Kander was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His father flew Boeing 707s for El-Al but when he lost his eye for medical reasons he was unable to carry on flying. His parents decided to start again in South Africa and moved to Johannesburg in 1963. Kander began taking pictures when he was 13 on a Pentax camera and later when drafted into the South African Air Force, worked in a darkroom printing aerial photographs. He moved to London in 1986, where he still resides with his wife Nicole and their three children, Oren, Ella and Talia.
Kander’s most celebrated images include Diver, Salt Lake, Utah 1997, in which a lone women peers out into the vast lake, and his 2009 portrait of Barack Obama photographed for The New York Times Magazine as a cover feature. Diver, Salt Lake, Utah, 1997 was also the cover image for Kander’s Monograph Beauty’s Nothing.
On 18 January 2009 Nadav Kander had 52 full page colour portraits published in one issue of The New York Times Magazine. These portraits (from a series titled Obama’s People) were of the people surrounding President Barack Obama, from Joe Biden (Vice President) to Eugene Kang (Special Assistant to The President). The same issue also included a series of cityscapes of Washington DC also taken by Kander. This is the largest portfolio of work by the same photographer The New York Times Magazine has ever showcased in one single issue.
Kander’s first monograph, Beauty’s Nothing (Arena Editions) was published in 2001. The book was followed up with a catalogue of nocturnal landscapes entitled Nadav Kander – Night which accompanied his exhibitions at the Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York and Shine Gallery, London. Flowers Gallery published Obama’s People to accompany the solo exhibition.
Kander’s latest monograph Yangtze – The Long River was published by Hatje Cantz in September 2010.
