Research 4 - Nadav Kander

I went to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2009 to see a portrait exhibition called Obahma's People. There were 52 life sized images of President Obahma's team which had been taken by Nadav Kander.  I had never heard of him until this exhibition.   I felt when I looked at each image I could see the personality (or lack of) of that person.   Whether or not I had it right is another matter. 

Nadav Kander - copied from http://www.prixpictet.com/users_judges/growth/nadav_kander/

He was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and was 13 when he started taking his own pictures on his Pentax camera.  He went into the Air Force and it was here that he worked in the darkroom producing aerial photographs and at this point he says he knew he wanted to be a photgrapher. 

When he photographed Obama's team he asked them to bring one item with them that would "tell us a bit more about them".   The shoot was done on the set above in Washington and Chicago.  Kander talks about having a connection with the person being photographed.  He photographed up to 13 people per day, some shots taking as little time as 10 minutes; there is 52 in the collection .   The photographs were published in a special inauguaration issue of the New York Times Magazine a week before inaguaration 18th January 2009.   They have since been exhibited in the Birmingham, London and Germany.   Three of the photographs are shown below: Hilary Clinton, Eugene Kang and Reggie Love. 

http://www.birmingham-rep.co.uk/event/nadav-kander-in-conversation. 

The full set of images can be viewed at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/2009-inauguration-gallery/index.html.   On this site there is also a recorded session with the photographer from which some of the information above is taken.