Fallen Bridge II Qinghai

The Yangtze is the longest river in the world to run through one single country. More people live along its banks than in the United States. Understandably it forms a key part of Chinese cultural identity. Nadav Kander travelled its length to take these photographs, which form a diary of development - a half-built bridge stretching out through smog, another collapsed into chemical effluent, a fallen palm tree resting in unnaturally blue water against a background of cranes... and so on.

Metal Palm, Nanjing

Nadav set out to "use the river as a metaphor for constant change" while photographing from its mouth to its source. And the Yangtze does function metaphorically as a representation of China's rapidly changing geographic and cultural environment.

Chongqing XI

The river has been transformed over the last twenty years as result of the controversial Three Gorges Dam, which has created a 600 kilometre reservoir, forcing relocation of up to four million residents as it turns nearby towns into modern Atlantises. It does outwardly benefit the country by helping reduce carbon emissions through 'clean' energy, but the provision of less than 3 percent of the national power requirements makes little dent in their overall coal consumption.

Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic)
From various visits to the river, Kander describes "a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself". The dam is not the first massive economic project to push China into the future with apparently unstoppable force, though no match for the disaster that was the Great Leap Forward.

Chongqing and Billboard

But this isn't Mao's country any more, and it is no longer struggling to be a global economic leader; it is already there. However, in its race to develop, the country's history is being lost, Nadav claims: "China appears to to be severing its roots... by moving forward at such an astounding and unnatural pace". 

Nadav Kander's Yangtze from East to West continues until 22 Nov at Flowers East.
See more of Kander's work at www.nadavkander.com

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