Description

Originally from Norway, Jonas Bendiksen began a multi-year project capturing the fallout of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The collapse spawned 15 new countries that are now established members of the international community. However, economic, political and ethnic disparities also gave birth to a series of far less known unrecognized republics, national aspirations and legacies. Bendiksen embarked on a project “about states that do not actually exist”. “Satellites” is a photographic journey through the scattered enclaves, unrecognized mini-states, and other isolated communities that straddle the southern borderlands of the former USSR. Pictured here in Birobidzhan, the first Jewish homeland of modern time, created 20 years before Israel.

I guess I'm a fairly simple photographer. There is very little hocus-pocus about what I do

Jonas Bendiksen
© Jonas Bendiksen | Magnum Photos

Jonas Bendiksen was born in Norway in 1977. He began his career at the age of 19 as an intern at Magnum’s London office, before leaving for Russia to pursue his own work as a photojournalist. Throughout the several years he spent there, Bendiksen photographed stories from the fringes of the former Soviet Union, a project that was published as the book Satellites (2006).

Bendiksen has made major bodies of work all over the world. He worked on many critically acclaimed long-form projects including The Places We Live, a project on the growth of urban slums across the world, and The Last Testament, which documents people who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ. Bendiksen became a nominee of Magnum Photos in 2004 and a member in 2008. He lives with his wife and three children outside Oslo, Norway.

© Jonas Bendiksen | Magnum Photos

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