Satellites

Event Details
KAZAKHSTAN. 2000. A Soyuz rocket fuel tank lies on the steppe.
RUSSIA. Altai Territory. 2000. Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Environmentalists fear for the region's future due to the toxic rocket fuel.
MOLDOVA. Transdniester. 2004. Patrons of "Red Heat", a local bar, drinking under banners with the Soviet hammer & sickle. In Transdniester, nostalgia for the USSR runs very high.
RUSSIA. Birobidzhan, Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia. 1999. Stalin looks out on his creation while Raisa sews.
RUSSIA. Birobidzhan, The Jewish Autonomous Region. 1999. The first Jewish homeland of modern time, created 20 years before Israel, located in Far-East Siberia. People waiting for the morning bus in the freezing winter, which often reaches -40 Celcius.
RUSSIA. Altai Territory. 2000. Dead cows lying on a cliff. The local population claim whole herds of cattle and sheep regularly die as a result of rocket fuel poisoned soil.
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September 25 - November 10, 2009, Madison, USA

Satellites

"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. Bendiksen’s haunting photographs and text explore these restless territories’ search for historical, religious and ideological identity, and form a timely look into unfinished chapters of Soviet history.

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When & Where

September 25 - November 10, 2009

University of Wisconsin
800 Langdon Street / Porter Butts Gallery, Memorial Union
Madison, WI 53706-1419
USA

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