Rena Effendi
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
Rena Effendi is a freelance photographer whose early work focused on the oil industry's effects on people's lives.
As a result, she followed a 1,700-kilometer oil pipeline through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This work was published in 2009 in her first book, Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives Along the Pipeline.
In 2013, Effendi published her second monograph, Liquid Land, 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 the Soviet Union. Liquid Land punctuates the theme of fragility and environmental decay of Baku, the city where Effendi was born and raised in.
Effendi has received many international awards, including the Alexia 2018 Professional Grant, the Prince Claus Fund Award for Culture and Development, World Press Photo (for observed portraits in 2014), SONY World Photography Award (fine art category), and the Getty Images Editorial Grant. Effendi was short-listed for the Prix Pictet Award in Photography and Sustainability.
Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. She has worked on editorial assignments for National Geographic, The New Yorker, Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Marie Claire, The Sunday Times, GEO, and others.
