Satellites
Jonas Bendiksen
On view: January 19 – February 27, 2007
The Soviet 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. Jonas Bendiksen, a Norwegian and Magnum’s youngest photographer, started his “multi-year 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. The itinerary goes through places such as Transdniester, a breakaway republic in Eastern Europe, Abkhazia, an unrecognized country on the Black Sea, the religiously conservative Ferghana Valley in Central Asia, the spacecraft crash zones between Russia and Kazakhstan, and the Jewish Autonomous Region of Far Eastern Russia.
Jonas recently received the 2nd prize for in the World Press Photo award in the category Daily Life Stories. In 2003 he received the Infinity Award from The International Centre of Photography (ICP) in New York , as well as a 1st prize in the Pictures Of the Year International (POY) awards. Other distinctions include the 2002 Nikon/Sunday Times Magazine Ian Parry Memorial Award, PDN’s “30 under 30”, the 2001 World Press Photo Masterclass, and a 2004 fellowship in photography from New York Foundation for the Arts. His work has been exhibited at the Tom Blau Gallery in London and in the “Moving Walls” exhibition at the Open Society Institute in New York . His magazine clients include National Geographic, GEO, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine and Mother Jones.