For more than 20 years, London–based photographer Nadav Kander has been adding to his series God’s Country, re–examining the great American outdoors as a place where untouched wilderness does not exist. His family knows about being on the move: “My dad lived in Germany, ended up in Israel and then we went to South Africa,” he says. “My history makes me an outsider in a way, and I’ve become interested in the fringes because of it.” As Kander travelled through the United States from coast to coast, he was drawn to the spaces between cities – flat, monochromatic land; parking lots; defunct race tracks. The celebrated portrait photographer, who has shot the likes of Barack Obama and Jodie Foster, isn’t interested in purely natural settings, even when it comes to landscapes; instead, he’s searching for the marks of human intervention. In this series, Kander conveys the isolation of solitary figures dwarfed by the vast, open spaces they find themselves in.
Postcards from the Outskirts of American Cities
The World, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2001.
Tourist, Monument Valley, Utah, USA, 1996.
Diver, Salt Lake, Utah, USA, 1997.
Telegraph Poles, Texas, USA, 1995.
Crowd and Sand Dune I, New Mexico, USA, 2005.
Cowboy, Los Angeles, USA, 2005.
Monument, Utah, USA, 1995.