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It is 4 p.m. British Standard Time and renowned landscape and portrait photographer Nadav Kander is looking at first-run prints of his new art book, newly arrived from Germany. His three-time publisher, Hatje Cantz, has sent them over for Kander’s review, and because it’s August, the photographer is fitting it in between respites to Ibiza and Italy.
These exotic jaunts are indeed well deserved, given Kander’s summer activities: completing a new art book, Dust, and taking on fashion’s longest-running campaign, Neiman Marcus’s The Art of Fashion®. Both are projects that share an austerely depicted sense of beauty—an aesthetic that has become his signature.
It’s an uncompromising and revealing style of portraiture that has won him the global Prix Pictet award; earned him inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery’s public collection; and most recently caught the eye of Neiman Marcus for its prestigious fall 2014 fashion campaign. And now, Kander joins the ranks of such photography greats as Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, and Walter Chin, among many others, who have shot The Art of Fashion.
A Preview of the September Spectacular
Kander’s selection brings a new lens to the 26-page fashion behemoth in its 20th year: a portrait-driven lens that homes in on a woman wearing the season’s most exquisite ensembles.
“Fashion design is an artistic expression of the designer, but ultimately it’s about the individual who wears the clothes,” says Georgia Christensen, the executive creative director of Neiman Marcus who led the program from 1995 through 2000 and again from 2010 to 2014. With this year’s creative approach focusing on the individual, the team turned to Kander. “Nadav’s craft,” says Neiman Marcus vice president of brand creative, Eddie Nunns, “is capturing the spirit of the individual.”
To do this, 15 models are masterfully lit against spectacularly striking sets, wearing looks from 29 designers including Alexander McQueen, Nina Ricci, and Dolce & Gabbana.
“We created an incredibly simple set that was both surreal and outrospective,” says Kander. “Most of my work inspires a stillness and a contemplation in people, and this campaign is no different.”
“Nadav beautifully bridges fall fashions’ more serious mood with the spirit of the individual. There’s a quiet motion and a solace that makes the work feel very relevant,” says Nunns. Christensen—who Nadav describes as “remarkable and very present on set while letting you do what you need to do”—agrees, defining Kander’s work as “a balance of mystery and beauty that you linger on.”
Mastering the Photo Series
Inspired by multiples and how they work together, Kander has a penchant for the photo series. Christensen was first introduced to the photographer’s work via his landscapes and portraits. “Delving deeper into his work, we were taken by Obama’s People, the 52-portrait series commissioned by The New York Times magazine,” she says.
“I love groups of pictures,” Kander adds, and indeed, each of his art books clock in at more than 100 pages apiece: Yangtze: The Long River (November 2010); Bodies. 6 Women. 1 Man. (February 2013); and Dust (available October 2014). “A body of work has more interest to me. It’s like reading a book, where it takes 300 pages to get the real nuances of a project. It goes further than the single shot.”
Like these works, Kander holds stories of images together with added processes and experiences. For instance, he has used a photocopying treatment to leverage “a very visually democratic response to politicians.” For Neiman Marcus, he differently lit each model and created an effect where it appears that her feet never touch the ground.
In September, The Art of Fashion will appear in the fall edition of The Book, Neiman Marcus’s biannual dossier of fashion’s best designer looks. At the same time, Kander will follow the traveling exhibition for Dust from L’oeil de la Photographie on rue Claude Bernard, in Paris, to Flowers Gallery, where it will reside through mid-October in London’s trendy Hoxton neighborhood, then making another stop in Holland and, finally, landing in Singapore.
How to top this tour and the forthcoming debut of the esteemed Neiman Marcus campaign? “I hope to publish a book of portraits in the next 10 years,” says the endless creator. To discover photographer Nadav Kander’s take on The Art of Fashion 2014, in the fall edition of Neiman Marcus’s The Book, visit neimanmarcus.com for more information.
