His ongoing series, Dark Line – Thames Estuary, focuses on the point where England’s longest river meets the sea. Arranged in diptych or triptych, the photographs look to obscured, uncertain horizons, evoking a sense of departure, loss and longing. The textured, yet often desolate images present a Thames that is sometimes violent, sometimes still. “I wish to make work that does not literally describe what is in front of me,” says Kander. “I do not wish to focus my lens and capture a millisecond of realistic information.” Throughout Michael Martens ‘sea change’ book he has also used the diptych or triptych method and therefore I will aim to try and complete some to implement into my photo book that i plan to do.

From an interview with Nadav Kander :

Could you describe the project for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet?

NK: Dark Line follows the Thames Estuary, the part of the river where it widens and slows down, where the river reaches the end of its journey and enters the North Sea. I’m very interested in the idea of journey and destiny, which works perfectly with the notion of the river widening, slowing and ultimately ending – and yet is the end really the beginning? To use T.S. Elliot’s quote, ‘In my end is my beginning.’ Does the river end or does it begin? Does it get evaporated and rise up into cloud and rain again, and do the cycles of life just continue onward? Is it not as human beings we’ve become caught up in having a beginning and an end?

I think that these ideas that Kander has described is really thought provoking and allows his images to contain a much deeper meaning than they would have otherwise. This sense of questioning reality and the notion of thinking ‘is this the beginning or end’ really allows a deeper thinking into life and essentially our perspective. This links to the ocean and the way in which we don’t know what lies beneath the surface, creating a sense of unknowing. This was taken of interest by my previous artist Jem Southam and i think it is interesting to see how different artists have explored similar ideas with a similar subject matter yet in different ways. Also Hiroshi Sugimoto displays a similar view presenting a different way of looking at a relatively boring subject matter, thus being the ocean.

The fascinating thing about this series is how unrecognizable the Thames is. It feels moodier and slower than in reality. I think this shows us Kander’s view of how he feels about the world around him and what slow moving, dark water means to him. In an interview he said “I don’t necessarily feel like that every time I’m there photographing but it’s how I feel about it more generally.” Kander elaborates in the interview to say that “there’s a lot of fear of the unknown” suggesting that the sea is the unknown after a bad experience when he was a child. On the other hand, despite the sense is isolation and mystery, Hiroshi Sugimotos project presents us with ideas of feeling a great sense of destiny or even voyage of where it might take them.

I think as a result of looking into this project I want to firstly create a series of diptych and triptych’s with my images that i have already collated. I also will conduct a photo shoot at sea level which will differ from my previous shoots that are often higher up, on top of cliff tops. Within this photo shoot, I will aim to portray a sense of darkness and the unknown by editing them in these ways but also using the weather to my advantage to enhance this.