Satellites: Photographs by Jonas Bendiksen
21 July 2006
21 July - 8 October 2006
From 21 July to 8 October 2006, the Jewish
Historical Museum will present the work of the Norwegian
photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen (1977). The exhibition, with some
100 photos, will offer a fascinating and often moving portrait of
life in remote, little-known areas of the former Soviet Union. The
museum will also display photos by Bendiksen of Israelis and
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip before the Israeli withdrawal. It
will be Bendiksen's first solo museum exhibition.
Jonas Bendiksen (a candidate member of the renowned photo agency
Magnum) spent five years exploring the fringes of the ex-Soviet
Union. He is fascinated with these satellite states, far from their
former overlords in Moscow and orphaned by the collapse of the
Soviet empire. Bendiksen's photos depict isolated communities
trying to adjust to their newfound independence. In a sensitive but
unsentimental way, this young photographer has captured the daily
lives of people in search of an identity and a raison d'être.
Bendiksen's subjects included the people of the Ferghana Valley,
where Muslims are oppressed and forced to practice their religion
in secret. In the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan
(originally established by Stalin), he witnessed many Jews
departing for Israel to escape poverty and anti-Semitism. One
striking series of photos depicts a region of Kazakhstan where the
remains of spacecraft fall to earth. We see dead cows in a pasture,
casualties of a highly polluted ecosystem. In another photo,
thousands of butterflies flit around the wreckage of a rocket that
is being dismantled.
In addition to Bendiksen's work on these regions, the exhibition at
the JHM will include photos that he took in the Gaza Strip. Until
2005, several thousand Jewish settlers shared this narrow stretch
of coastline with more than one million Palestinians, but the two
groups inhabited very different worlds. Colour photos of the
Israelis, alongside black-and-white pictures of the Palestinians,
reveal disturbing contrasts.
Jonas Bendiksen's work appears regularly in magazines such as
National Geographic, Newsweek, GEO and Sunday Times
Magazine. He has received major prizes, including the Infinity
Award from the International Centre of Photography in New York and
first prize in the Pictures of the Year International Competition.
In 2001, Bendiksen took part in the World Press Photo Masterclass
in Rotterdam.
Satellites has been created by Jonas Bendiksen in
collaboration with Magnum Photos. Aperture has published a
book to accompany the show, bearing the same title (€39.90).
For visual materials and/or more information, please contact the
Communication Department:
T +31 20 5 310 370 / F +31 20 5310 311 / E Communication. The JHM is
open daily from 11.00 to 17.00.
