Description

Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen spent several years traveling across the southern borderlands of the former USSR to explore the unrecognized states, breakaway republics and remote communities that were born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The project took Bendiksen from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, including Transnistria, pictured here, a breakaway republic in Eastern Europe.

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).

His sharply evocative images explore themes of community, faith and identity with unsparing honesty. 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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