Rena Effendi

In 2008, National Geographic Magazine honored her with an All Roads Photography Award, in 2009 she received the Young Photographer in the Caucasus Award, and in 2011 she won a Prince Claus Award.

Effendi began photographing in 2001 and became a full-time photographer in 2005 after quitting her job as an Economic Development Specialist at the United States Agency for International Development in Baku. Effendi's first monograph Pipe Dreams, published by Mets & Schilt, focuses on how the oil industry effected the lives of ordinary citizens in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey along the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. She initially got a commercial assignment from BP, the oil consortium that operates this pipeline from Azerbaijan via Georgia to the southern Turkish port of Ceyhan. While photographing this promotional material, she discovered that just a small percentage of urban population in her country is benefiting from the oil boom. Over the course of 6 years this work was turned into Pipe Dreams.

Effendi has also produced stories in Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster of 1986, transgender people in Istanbul, village life in Khinalug, the Russia–Georgia war of 2008, life of youth in Tehran, Russia, Cairo and Afghanistan. She published this work in 2010 by the title of Chernobyl: Still Life in the Zone. In the work she decided to showcase peoples life in the zone instead of a memento.

Rena Effendi (born April 26, 1977) is an Azerbaijani freelance photographer. Her work focuses on themes of environment, post-conflict society, the effects of oil industry on people, and social disparity. As of 2019, she is based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Effendi was born April 26, 1977, in Baku. She studied at the Azerbaijan State Institute of Languages.