God’s Country - Nadav Kander
Flood Level, California, 1995
“Most of this series I have photographed while alone. I always choose to travel early in the morning looking for scenes that have the atmosphere I intuitively crave. I find the feeling of melancholy and longing very familiar and I make work that satisfies this. I make quiet pictures which reveal the scene as familiar and yet strange. As if you are looking beneath the scene you are seeing. This is often heightened by the uncomfortable feeling I feel in vast landscapes. A sinister feeling arises when I realise that the American wilderness does not exist in my landscapes. It does not exist in my man altered landscapes. Big business like the food and pharmaceutical industries have shaped this landscape. This beautiful land must be God’s Country.”
Nadav Kander is a photographer I’ve admired long before the visit to Paris Photo. His ability to effortlessly shift between personal and commercial practice is commendable and his continued impact on the world through his camera lens arguably makes him one of the most influential photographic voices of the last few decades. I’ve honed on his project God’s Country here which was exhibited at Paris Photo this year and captured my heart.
Kander is a man who has admitted to melancholy on several occasions. He’s not the type to be satisfied with sitting on his emotions though and, as every good creator does, has found a way to portray that feeling in the American Landscape. There is a hint of melancholy in the content of this project with the same face-on, eye level approach to shooting being adopted and objects from the landscape solitary in comparison to a consistent scenic backdrop. With the odd exception, it becomes second nature to focus on the object of the shot which is a contradiction in itself of how people with melancholy feel others see them. They often feel overlooked and struggle to be seen in a world that keeps spinning around them but Kander expertly shines the spotlight on these isolated objects. It is also irrelevant to him how obvious to the eye these objects are - the sign in this article is glaringly obvious thanks to its colour and dominance of the frame but other focuses such as the goalpost and the shopping cart are still placed centre of frame so they are given some form of small recognition. It’s a subtle and nice touch, suggesting however small or irrelevant you feel that you matter to someone and are seen in the abyss by someone.
Supermarket Car Park, El Paso, 2000
Goal Post, California, 2004
