Benita Suchodrev was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts with a focus on Art History from SUNY Purchase, New York, continuing to a Master of Arts in English Literature, graduating with high honors.

In 2008 Benita relocated to Berlin where she began an extensive documentation of the cosmopolitan city’s multifaceted art scene while working on diverse photographic projects. Later she studied at the Neue Schule für Fotografie in the class of Eva Bertram. Her portrait and documentary work has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally and is part of the Rafael Tous Foundation for Contemporary Art Barcelona,  the Michael Horbach Stiftung Cologne, as well as private collections in Moscow, Berlin and New York.

She has published Of Lions and Lambs (2019) and 48 Hours Blackpool (2018) with KEHRER Verlag. Her photographs have appeared in NACHTLEBEN BERLIN 1974 – BIS HEUTE (Metrolit Verlag, 2013), BERLIN NOW (teNeues Verlag, 2009) and have been covered by various media including ARTE, THE GUARDIAN, ZEIT ONLINE, ARD, RBB24 Kulturradio, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, STERN.DE, DNCHT, AMICA Italy, ART, MARE Magazine, Neues Deutschland, Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel, SCHWARZWEISS, MIND China, The Moscow Times, Российский Фото Союз (Russian Photographers Union), Photo & Video Russia, Искусство – The Art Magazine Russia, among others.

Benita currently lives and works in Berlin.

“My work is concerned primarily with the human subject. I am attracted to the poetic and the bizarre, the bold and the vulnerable, with little interest for strict documentation or sensation. I work intuitively with great regard for authenticity, spontaneity and the transitional moment; that elusive split of a second between what has passed, what is to come and the traces it leaves behind. The drama and ambiguity of human expression and gesture in that transitional moment is what fascinates me the most.”