In Rena Effendi’s photographs, a commitment to the social documentary tradition is matched with a great formal beauty. On Effendi’s most recent trip to New York City, earlier this year, I learned that her father was an environmental activist and roaming entomologist, always away on a butterfly hunt. All that remains of his lifetime of work are fifty photographs of these rare and exquisite creatures. In her series “Oil Village,” Effendi contrasts her father’s images with her own of environmental decay in her hometown of Baku, Azerbaijan, which Forbes named the most polluted city in the world in 2008.
A selection of this work is part of the current Moving Walls exhibition at the Open Society Foundation, along with six other artists, which opens tonight and runs through October 31, 2012. Here’s a look.
All photographs courtesy Rena Effendi/Institute.
