Patrick Bienert (born 1980)[1] is a German photographer[2] who works on long-term projects of portrait, landscape and documentary photography. He predominantly documents youth culture and transformation on the borders of Eastern Europe.[3] In January 2020, he published the book East End of Europe, about a pro-European generation in Georgia.[4][5] In 2017, Bienert published the book Wake Up Nights, about young nightlife culture in Ukraine.[4]
His projects are grounded in cultures and identity in relation to the history and its traces between the land and its inhabitants.[3]
His photography project East End of Europe about a pro-European generation in Georgia was published in 2020 as a book by Kahl Editions.[2][n 1]Another Magazine included the monograph in its list of must-have photo books in 2020.[6] Other bodies of Bienert's work include Asmara (2013),[n 2] in which he photographed both the modernist architecture of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, from the period of the Italian colonisation, and the city's current inhabitants; Clothing Trade,[n 3] a project about the second-hand clothing industry in Tunisia (2018); and Banks of Dnister (2019),[n 4] for which he followed the Dnister river along its route through Moldova, the breakaway state Transnistria and Ukraine, portraying the youth culture and the landscapes in the post-Soviet states.[citation needed]
Bienert's work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic,[7]Double Magazine[8] and Zeit Magazin.[9] In 2018 he received a grant from the Goethe-Institut to work on his project about the second-hand clothing industry in Tunisia.[10] His personal projects have been exhibited at OFR Galerie in Paris;[11]Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany;[12] Amphithéâtre de Carthage, Tunisia;[13] and Store Studios, London.[14] Commissioned by the fashion brand Jil Sander, Bienert photographed at the Italian island of Ponza for the brand's pre-fall 2020 advertisements.[15]
Publications
Wake Up Nights. Self-published, 2017. Edition of 500 copies.