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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Girl with chicken pox at home. Gas Unit #6 in Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Pararge adrastoides Bienert. Nearly extinct. Habitat Talish mountains of Lenkoran, Azerbaijan
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Girl living in a cardboard home on the top floor of an unfinished emergency hospital building now housing refugees since 1993. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Brothers in the unlit hallway of an unfinished emergency hospital building now a refugee settlement since 1993. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Boy playing his drum on a heap of construction waste. Refugee settlement in a construction factory. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Soviet era books in an abandoned library of a former "House of Culture" in Hatayi district of Baku. Azerbaijan. 2008
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Daphnis nerii. Habitat: formerly Baku and the Absheron peninsula. The species is extinct in Azerbaijan due to near-extermination of the oleander trees and bushes.
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Refugee settlement in the suburbs of Baku. Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
School boys in a refugee settlement at the abandoned gas processing factory. Bibi-Heybat. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2008
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Oil field in Romani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Oil worker in Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Satyrus actaea. Habitat: Gobustan and mountains of Nakhichevan. Endangered species in Azerbaijan
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Boy sitting on a Soviet era oil cistern. Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Soviet era oil field. Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Medicinal oil baths in Bibi-Heybat village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2006
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Aynur at home with toy leopard. Balakhani oil village. Baku, Azerbaijan. June 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Boloria caucasica. Habitat: high mountain altitudes of over 2500 metres above sea level, on peaks of Baba-Dag, Bazar-Dyuzi and Shakh-Dag in Azerbaijan. Endangered due to over-grazing in mountain pastures.
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Balakhani oil fields, Soviet era production. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Ship cemetery on Nargin Island off the Baku bay. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2006
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Parnassius nordmanni. Endangered species rarely found in Shah-Dag and Baba-Dag mountains of Guba, Azerbaijan
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
"Iodine" lake polluted with oil and plastic. Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Laundry hanging on the oil field. Balakhani, Baku. Azerbaijan. 2010
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Wedding dress on a dump. Balakhani village, Baku. Azerbaijan. 2005
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Papilio machaon L. Habitat: Baku and the Absheron Peninsula
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© 2021 Rena Effendi
Gas mask in an oil puddle. Balakhani village. Baku, Azerbaijan. 2010
Public Story
We Are Here
Credits:
rena effendi
Date of Work:
01/01/10 - 01/10/12
Updated: 05/04/18
Liquid Land is co-authored with my father Rustam Effendi, a dissident scientist and entomologist who devoted his life to studying, hunting and collecting over 30,000 butterflies in the Soviet Union. Inherited by the State Institute of Zoology after his death in 1991, his vast collection is disintegrating. Alongside with thousands of glass boxes filled with perished butterflies, the only remaining visual evidence of his life’s work - is the fifty photographs of endangered butterflies made for a manuscript he never had a chance to publish.
Next to my father’s dead, but iridescent butterflies, my photographs show persistent life in the world’s most polluted areas around Baku and the Absheron peninsula, where I was born and grew up. In my mind, the two opposite images gravitate towards each other. As I worked on this book with my father, I, in my own way, got to know him much closer than when he was alive.