Description

From 2005 to 2007 Jonas Bendiksen documented life in the slums of four different cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela. He captured the diversity of personal histories found in these dense neighborhoods that cannot only be defined by their poverty. Here, a little girl plays in Laxmi Chawl, a neighborhood of Dharavi. The lightbulbs are put out for an upcoming neighborhood wedding.

Often, the most worthwhile and convincing images tend to lurk within the hidden, oblique stories that fly just below the radar

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).

He 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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