RENA EFFENDI, PHOTOGRAPHER
This year the San Francisco World Music Festival will collaborate with photographer Rena Effendi for the Epic Project, weaving together images from her photography book, "Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of lives along the pipeline."
Rena's images capture the sobering effects that the oil and gas pipelines snaking throughout Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey have had on our species and the environment. During the Epic Project, her photos will be incorporated into parts of the production in counterpoint to the music of many cultures blending in harmony with one another- a reminder that we have the capacity to use our modern minds and modern skills for positive change in our world.
PIPE DREAMS
A chronicle of lives along the pipeline
A photography book by Rena Effendi
A pipe dream is a fantastic hope that is regarded as being impossible to achieve. This book is dedicated to the people of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, linked by the oil pipeline and their fading hopes for a better future. Besides corporate public relations campaigns, little photographic evidence exists about the impact the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline has had on Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. This book portrays life as it is lived, with no commercial or public relations agenda. It ‘un-smiles’ the calendar smiles of corporate propaganda and sheds journalistic light on this geopolitically important region.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Oil and gas pipelines are the modern-day arteries of our world, transporting precious hydrocarbons, the blood of our civilization. Even in the current economic crisis, as the world’s economy still expands, demand for energy grows, and the needy fingers of oil companies reach further and deeper into the earth.
Snaking 1,700 kilometers through five conflict zones, in the shadow of the Caucasus mountains, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline maneuvers through a delicate web of social, environmental and political concerns. Carrying one million barrels of oil daily to the West, while combating Russian energy influence, this pipeline project is a part of “the New Great Game”, a game that affects the lives of millions of citizens in the adjoining countries of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
From slum dwellers who lost homes to an oil-bloated real-estate boom to victims of unresolved conflicts and female sex workers attracted by the petro-bonanza, the impoverished people I met in this six-year photographic journey bear the brunt of efforts to allay the West’s appetite for oil. The purpose of this book is to portray the human cost of a multi-billion dollar project - the price paid by those who lost their farms and livelihoods while their faces have been hidden by glossy publications which praise the pipeline project: “It’s for the country’s greater good!” No doubt states’ budgets have increased, but at what cost to the people who live their silent lives along this pipeline?
