Rena Effendi

Effendi was born in 1977 in Baku. She studied linguistics at the Azerbaijan State Institute of Languages. Effendi began photographing in 2001 and became a full-time photographer in 2005 after quitting her job as an Economic Development Specialist at the United States Agency for International Development in Baku. Effendi's first monograph Pipe Dreams, published by Mets & Schilt, focuses on how the oil industry affected the lives of ordinary citizens in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey along the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. She initially got a commercial assignment from BP, the oil consortium that operates this pipeline from Azerbaijan via Georgia to the southern Turkish port of Ceyhan. While photographing this promotional material, she discovered that just a small percentage of the urban population in her country is benefiting from the oil boom. Over the course of 6 years, this work was turned into Pipe Dreams. Effendi has also produced stories in Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster of 1986, transgender people in Istanbul, village life in Khinalug, the Russia–Georgia war of 2008, life of youth in Tehran, Russia, and Cairo. She published this work in 2010 by the title of Chernobyl: Still Life in the Zone. In the work, she decided to showcase people's life in the zone instead of a memento. Her work has been published in the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Financial Times, Time Magazine, National Geographic, Marie Claire, Courrier International, Le Monde and L'Uomo Vogue. Her work has also been shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London, Aperture Gallery in New York, Istanbul Modern, Venice Biennial and Art Basel.

Rena Effendi is recorded as having received Prince Claus Award.