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Rena Effendi, Azerbaijan

2012 Sony World Photography Awards - 3rd Place, Still Life, Professional Competition

 

Rena Effendi’s early work focused on the oil industry’s effects on people’s lives in her region. As a result, she followed a 1,700 km oil pipeline through Georgia and Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This work of six years was published in 2009 in her first book “Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline”. In 2012 Effendi published her second monograph “Liquid Land”, a lyrical visual narrative, where her images are paired with photographs of perished butterflies hunted by her father, a Soviet entomologist, who collected more than 30,000 butterflies in Soviet Union. Liquid Land punctuates the theme of fragility and environmental decay. Effendi has won several international awards including the National Geographic “All Roads” photography award, SONY World photography award and Getty Images Editorial grant. In 2011 Rena Effendi became the laureate of the Prince Claus Fund award for Culture and Development and in 2012 she was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet award in photography and sustainability for her series Chernobyl: Still Life in the Zone. In 2014 Rena Effendi won two awards in the World Press Photo “Observed Portraits” categories for singles and stories.

 

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