Dust – a radiant legacy

From April 7 to May 7, 2016, the work of Nadav Kander will be showing at the Flowers Gallery in New York. For his dystopian series Dust, the Israeli photographer (*1961) travelled to the former Soviet Union where he documented the effects of the country's relentless quest for nuclear armaments during the Cold War.

From 1949 to 1989, the region on the present border between Russia and Kazakhstan known as ‚The Polygon' (Russian word for 'proving ground') became the backdrop for a most cynical experiment. In this time-span, more than 460 nuclear explosions were conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site. The military zone south of Kurchatov – the region's administrative city named after Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, director of the Soviet atomic bomb project – had been falsely declared as uninhabited. In reality, however, scientists observed and documented the effects of radiation and pollution on the local population and its environment.

Further south, the Priozersk region was also utilised as a military testing ground. Today, the crumbling remains of buildings stand in the deserted landscape like silent witnesses of a secretive past. Kander's images capture these eerie locations in hauntingly poetic, melancholy images that take an unsettling look at the destructive aspect of human nature.

For further details visit Flowers Gallery