“Albanian Survival” 1991-1993

There is not another country in Europe that has been misunderstood, mystified and romanticised as much and for as long as Albania. For more than four decades, the totalitarian communist dictatorship ruled in a state of isolation from the rest of the world, which responded with oblivion and indifference.

Together with the Albanian publicist Ardian Klosi, I travelled several times through the country at time of its greatest upheavals and changes. My black and white photos from 1991 and 1992 show the intensity of my encounter with an almost unknown country. These photographs were part of my first photography book about Albania.

Poor peasants and mountain dwellers who lived as if time forgot them, and ex-political prisoners and exiles who could shed light the saddest chapter in the history of the country. Children with adult eyes in peculiar playgrounds, women whose age is no longer discernible due to hardship and oppression, and landscapes tinged with a mixture of beauty and decay- all is laid bare in my work.

My photographs put the Albanians in the foreground. A long-suffering people who nevertheless, laugh and convey the most important characteristic of Albanians, survival.