She uses a Rolleiflex 2.8 GX because it requires her to look down into the camera to shoot, thus letting her subjects see her entire face and make more frequent eye contact with her. It “establishes trust,” Rena Effendi recently told Monocle Films. Just one of many positive attributes of Twin Lens Reflex cameras.
The Istanbul-based Effendi shot a feature piece on Tripoli, Libya for the January 2022 issue of Monocle Magazine, which was how I was introduced to her work. It takes guts for a woman to shoot in Libya, under any circumstances and even now 10-plus years after Muammar Gaddafi’s assassination. That said, Effendi is quite experienced working in the Middle East, across the Maghreb, and in other places where photographers - especially female ones - are not particularly welcome.
The National Geographic contributor shoots only with film, eschewing digital formats. She believes film provides richer, warmer textural qualities in her images. She also says that using film focuses her intently on each photo she takes and that digital approaches can otherwise generate too many less-considered, less-thoughtful images.
Her images of people living and working, especially women and often amidst difficulty if not outright danger, are stunning both in their depiction of pain and grace. Look no further than her record of war-crime atrocities in the Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire, daily life on a Sioux reservation in North Dakota, Istanbul during COVID lockdown, urban decay in Cairo, and Chernobyl in “still life.”
There is certainly hope to be found even in these images. Effendi also captures an extraordinary array of happier, more colorful circumstances such as her depictions of Bengali weddings.
Learn more about her work at www.reffendi.com or through her Insta site at renaeffendiphoto.
Here are four images from her Insta account taken in Azerbaijan, India (2), and Libya.
Images courtesy of Rena Effendi.