Satellites [Jonas Bendiksen]

Photographs from the Fringes of the Former Soviet Union

"Satellites" is the culmination of Jonas Bendiksen’s fascinating seven-year photographic journey through unrecognized countries, enclaves, and isolated communities on the periphery of the former Soviet Union. From Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia, he takes us into little known places where the stark legacy of the Soviet collapse continues to evolve: Transdniester, Abkhazia and Nagorno Karabakh, the Ferghana Valley, the Jewish Autonomous Region, and the spaceship crash zones on the Kazakh steppes. In these outposts, the transition to the post-communist world order brought mixed results - some lost everything to bloody civil wars, while others find themselves in tiny pariah states that remain all but closed to the outside world. Some evolved peculiar self-styled brands of capitalism, others simply packed their bags and left.

15 years after the fall of the USSR, Bendiksen's haunting photographs and text explore these restless territories' search for historical, religious and ideological identity, and forms a timely look into unfinished chapters of Soviet history.