Rena Effendi

Her work focuses on themes of environment, post-conflict society, the effects of oil industry on people, and social disparity.

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.

[5][6] She won 3rd prize in the Observed Portraits category at the 2014 World Press Photo Contest, Amsterdam, Netherlands for "Transylvania: Built on Grass".