Nadav Kander's Dust: "Empty landscapes of invisible dangers"

Priozersk (formally known as ‘Moscow 10’) and Kurchatov are closed cities, restricted military zones, concealed and not shown on maps until they were ‘discovered’ by Google Earth. Enlisted to the pursuits of science and war, the sites were utilized for the covert testing of atomic and long distance weapons.
Falsely claimed as uninhabited, the cities, along with nearby testing site ‘The Polygon’, set the stage for one of the most cynical experiments ever undertaken. Scientists watched and silently documented the horrifying effects of radiation and pollution on the local population and livestock.
Demolished to preserve their military secrets, the areas now consist predominantly of the ruinous architecture and desolate landscapes featured in Kander’s haunting photographs. A result of the Cold War and of the relentless quest for nuclear armaments, the ruins stand as accidental monuments to the melancholic, dark and destructive side of human nature.
Kander’s photographs, as such, portray such settings as stake facts. Yet they have, in their shape and locale, a distinct poeticism, as if secrets exist in the silence of the monuments, bowing under heavy skies.
The Polygon Nuclear Test Site XII (Dust To Dust), Kazakhstan 2011
 
Describing what he saw as “empty landscapes of invisible dangers,” Kander’s images evoke his sense of “awe and fear.”
As Will Self writes in his foreword to Dust: “These images do not make beautiful what is not, they ask of us that we repurpose ourselves to accept a new order of both the beautiful and the real.”

Nadav Kander, born in 1961 in Israel, is best known for Yangtze – The Long River, the series which earned him the prestigious Prix Pictet award in 2009. His commissioned work include Obama’s People, an acclaimed 52 portrait series commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, and recent portraits for the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Road to 2012, about Britain’s Olympic athletes.
He has exhibited at venues like the Palais de Tokyo, the Herzilya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel and the Musée De L’Elysee, Lausanne.

Dust will be shown at Flowers gallery, April 7-May 7, 2016, 529 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011, Tuesday to Saturday 10am – 6pm. Learn more here.
Tom Seymour

Tom Seymour is an Associate Editor at The Art Newspaper and an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication. His words have been published in The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, Financial Times, Wallpaper* and The Telegraph. He has won Writer of the Year and Specialist Writer of the year on three separate occassions at the PPA Awards for his work with The Royal Photographic Society.