Photojournalist Profile
Rena Effendi
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| Photo by unknown |
According to The Photo Society Telling The World's Stories Through Pictures, she became a social documentary photographer in 2001 after attending painting classes. She never wanted to be photographer. In Rena Effendi's interview she says, “Actually, I never wanted to be a photographer. When I was a child the only photographer I knew was a very sad man who came to our school to take group portraits. He looked shabby and smelled of alcohol and never talked. Sometimes I saw him on the street dressed in a cartoon hero outfit. There were many photographers like him in public parks and promenades. That sad and lonely image of a photographer had stuck in my head for a very long time. It never crossed my mind that photography could be art, that it could be as expressive as painting or music.”
While other young girls were concerned with the latest fashion or music trends, Rena Effendi was already concerned about armed conflict and starving children. Telling stories that needed to be told and addressing social issues along the way was the wellspring of her photographic inspiration as it says in Anatomy Films. The people who influences her are Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Sarah Moon, Mary Ellen Mark, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Jarmusch, Gabriel García Márquez, Arundhati Roy, Mikhail Bulgakov. She was happy to tell stories through photographs. She says "You only start to fall involve with the place only after a certain time passes and that's when you take your most powerful images, in the whole process it really it becomes very personal, it becomes very much involved."
In Anatomy Films its says, Most jobs start with a great amount of trepidation. And in a day and age when most documentary photographers are tied to a corporation and digital, she is still a film photographer. Her camera of choice is a Rolleiflex 2.8 that’s older than her. She feels that being limited to only 12 exposures per roll forces her to give great thought to every image. While she did develop her own B+W film in the early years, she has always sent out her color images to various labs around the world. But the Rolleiflex 2.8F is an extremely sharp weapon of choice.
In an interview Rena was asked a question, "Your profession has taken you to some of the world's most remote communities. Have you experienced any challenges as a female photographer on such assignments?" She replied saying, "I visited a remote, mountain community in Azerbaijan when I was 8 months pregnant. It was a very traditional, patriarchal village. But while photographing daily life there, it dawned on me that nobody noticed my pregnancy, asked how many months along I was, or offered me a chair. Then I realised that, because I carried a camera, to them I was a person who had come with a purpose, and had the power to tell their story. The gender dynamics really changed. It was almost as though I couldn’t be both a woman and a photographer. The usual attitudes and customs towards women there did not apply to me. I was a kind of ‘alien’!" She did have one low point, “In 2016 when I was robbed of all my savings and earnings of the past 20 years in a corrupt banking scheme in Azerbaijan.”
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| Photo by Rena Effendi |
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| Photo by Rena Effendi |
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| Photo by Rena Effendi |
Photographic Style: "Workers harvest salt in Dharasana, Gujarat. In May 1930, the month after Gandhi led a march to protest British restrictions on salt, activists trained in nonviolent resistance marched here and were savagely beaten, a seminal event that advanced India’s drive for independence. March, 20013, Gujarat, India." For the third photo above it is showing texture, it is shiny and wet. The reflection of the women on the water.
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| Photo by Rena Effendi Photographic Style: "Cousins Anuța and Magdalena Mesaroș, 17, are on their way to a wedding in Sat Șugatăg, Maramureș." From the July 2013 issue.For this photo it is showing Quality of Light, you can see the shadow of where the light is coming from as well as the light doesn’t have too much exposure. According to The Photo Society Telling The World's Stories Through Pictures, She was honored with a 2011 Prince Claus Award for her portraits of individual lived experiences in zones of silence, for documenting the social impact of rampant, profit-driven development and for raising awareness of social realities in contexts that require developmental support. For Rena she hasn’t been told anything because of the career she does and the gender. I am in Visual Digital Arts and I think that it is almost the same thing. I want to become a Videogame Designer and I was told that I probably won't make it far because of my gender from a teacher of mine. So I feel like I could relate to the career wise and having people see you as a Photojournalist ( Videogame Designer ) rather than being a female. |
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