Amateur Photographer - UK (2019-06-21)

subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 15 June 2019 23

Left:TraceyEmin,

asphotographed

in 1998

Below:Chongqing

IV(SundayPicnic),

2006,fromthe

series‘Yangtze,The

LongRiver’

nadav kander

all

pctures

©

nadav

k ander

L

ooking through the list
of previous winners of the
Outstanding Contribution
to Photography Awards
reads like a roll call of some of the
biggest names in photography. Not
all will be to everybody’s tastes, but
regardless, these are people who
have not just contributed to the
craft, but actively shaped it too. To
name but a few, in the past decade,
the top recognition has gone to
Elliott Erwitt (2015), Martin Parr
(2017), Mary Ellen Mark (2014), Eve
Arnold (2010) and most recently
Candida Höfer in 2018.
The latest recipient is Nadav
Kander, who having won a plethora
of other prestigious awards in the
past four decades, is no stranger to
adding silverware to his collection.
Among other top plaudits, he
received an Honorary Fellowship
from the Royal Photographic
Society in 2015, has placed twice
at the World Press Photo Awards
(2013 and 2014), and in 2009,
picked up the Prix Pictet prize and
was also named the International
Photographer of the Year at the 7th
Annual Lucie Awards.
Kander first received his own
camera aged just 13. Aside from a
couple of years in the intervening
period, he has been taking pictures
ever since. He grew up in South
Africa where it was compulsory for
young men to partake in National
Service. It was during his time in
the Air Force, where he took aerial
pictures and developed them in the

2019 Sony World Photography award for Outstanding

Contribution to Photography recipient, nadav kander,

speaks to Amy Davies about his varied career

Speaking

darkroom, that the idea was firmly

cemented that he wanted nothing

else but to be a photographer.

In the years since leaving South

Africa, having moved to England

at 21, he has produced seven books,

been exhibited countless times, and

finds himself in the permanent

collections of some of the world’s

finest galleries, including the

National Portrait Gallery, the

Museum of Contemporary

Photography in Chicago and the

Société Générale in Paris.

I meet Kander the morning

after the Sony World Photography

Awards ceremony, where he’d

picked up his prize and a moving

video of tributes was displayed to

the attending audience. I find

him at Somerset House, where

journalists and reporters from

around the world are taking it

in turns to speak to the man

surrounded by his work at the

Sony World Photography Awards

exhibition at Somerset House.

Hoping to snatch just five minutes,

I’m rewarded by waiting until

everybody else has left the building,

and we head to the patio outside for

a welcome (for Kander) sit down –

it’s obvious he hasn’t stopped since

the previous night.

You may never notice just how

ridiculously noisy London’s

streets are until you try to make a

recording of somebody speaking.

The Extinction Rebellion protests

are taking place on the nearby

Waterloo Bridge, while it feels like

every ambulance, motorbike and

helicopter in the city have been

waiting for this moment to show up.

Undeterred, Kander picks up my

dictaphone (he’s curious to know

why I use it instead of my phone)

and speaks directly into it. As I

come to transcribe our chat a few

weeks later, I’ve never been more

grateful for somebody else’s

interview etiquette in my life.

Kander

with