Revealed yet concealed. Shameless yet shameful. Ease with unease. Beauty and destruction. These paradoxes are displayed in all my work: an enquiry into what it feels like to be human.

These naked pictures are the latest, and perhaps strongest, distillation of the themes that continue to fascinate and nourish me. My subject matter is varied, but the essence is the same. Whether photographing on the banks of the Yangtze, or in my studio, I work with the human conditions that link us all: the vulnerability of mankind. What it is to be alone in the world. What it is to be human.

Popular imagery airbrushes the shadow from our lives, but of course there is no health without illness, no life without death, and no beauty without imperfection. Wherever I may be, my pictures seek to expose the shadow and vulnerability that exists in all of us, and it is this vulnerability that I find so beautiful.

Nadav Kander, 2012