Art

Magnum’s youngest member is careful and talented, but his images of six neglected and troubled former Soviet statelets, under the title ‘Satellites’ require a deeper reading than a camera can provide – and his tendency to melodrama doesn’t help. In Abkhazia, Bendiksen photographs his visa, which is essential to gain entry – even though few other states recognises this one’s existence.

In Kyrgyzstan he pictures heroin users: the drug, apparently, costs less here than beer. Yet this is not really photojournalism. The trio waiting for a bus in pulverisingly cold Birobidzhan glow like a Hopper painting; other pictures of this Jewish state seem to have been shot through a coloured filter, so green, blue or red do they appear.

So what is this – a photo story, or misery in the service of a pretty image? Defunct spacecraft among white butterflies in Russia’s Altai valley make a marvellous composition (and poignant, since the area is environmentally unsound). But a Lenin statue surrounded by birds feels twee, sensationalised. If he can find a more coherent way to reconcile his subject matter and his aesthetic instinct – the wish to show with the wish to show off – then Bendiksen’s satellites will really go into orbit.