iFoam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamGrachtengordel
Nadav Kander - The Edge of Things
Four decades of Nadav Kander's photography, from his Prix Pictet-winning Yangtze River series to portraits of Obama and David Lynch, drawn together by fragility, time and quiet intensity.
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In Yibin I (Bathers), the top half of the frame is haze. Below it, a cluster of tiny swimmers gathers at the foot of a huge boulder on the Yangtze, and a factory chimney smokes faintly. The people are small and the empty parts do much of the talking, which is how this whole survey works.
The first major survey of Kander's four decades, it moves from the Yangtze series that won him the 2009 Prix Pictet to the Thames and Chernobyl, where a Pripyat school library lies in collapsing piles of books. You also meet Barack Obama against a plain grey background, stripped of any sign of power. There's video scored by Max Richter and a projection Kander narrates himself.
Digital Camera World's Tom May says Kander uses emptiness, shadow and silence "not as a backdrop but as ingredients", so give it slow looking. Adult entry is €16, Foam is open until 21:00 on Thursdays and Fridays, and the show runs until 31 January 2027.
Editor's pick
In Yibin I (Bathers), tiny swimmers gather under a boulder on the Yangtze while haze fills half the frame. Four decades of Kander follow, from Chernobyl to Obama against plain grey. Digital Camera World says he uses emptiness "as ingredients".
Look for
Yibin I (Bathers), 2007
Look for the tiny swimmers dwarfed by a vast boulder on the Yangtze, under a sky of haze, with a factory chimney smoking faintly behind.
Barack Obama I, 2009
Obama stands against plain grey with nothing to signal power; it comes from the 2009 New York Times Magazine commission to photograph 52 members of his administration.
David Lynch I, 2007
The director, hair tousled, is set against a blank white background, the image Foam chose to announce the show.
School Library, Pripyat, 2004
In the abandoned town next to Chernobyl, a school library's books lie in collapsing piles where they were left.
Treow V (Trust and Promise), 2021
A leafless oak in Wales stands nearly swallowed by thick fog, the clearest case of Kander letting emptiness fill most of the frame.
Good for
- Dates
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
Skip if
You want photographs that explain what happened: Foam says Kander evokes rather than simply documents.
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Image credits
9
- Nadav Kander - The Edge of Things© Nadav Kander, courtesy Howard Greenberg & Flowers Gallery
- Marcos Kueh: PRESENTCourtesy of Museum Van Loon
- Plantation along the CanalCourtesy of Amsterdam Museum
- Plantation along the Canal: Stories of People and PowerCourtesy of Museum Willet-Holthuysen
- Foam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamDqfn13 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
- Museum Van LoonRijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Amsterdam MuseumJvhertum, Public domain
- Museum Willet-HolthuysenJane023 / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Allard PiersonAndy Li (Onthewings), Wikimedia Commons, CC0