A few years ago, when Enri Canaj visited the Magnum office in Paris, he discovered images from his native Albania in the Magnum archives. Using images from five photographers, including himself, Canaj began to trace the history of the country’s post-communist era, from the end of the regime in 1991 to the gradual reopening of borders in the 1990s and a period of economic growth around the turn of the millennium.
This summer, an exhibition of this work will be on display at the Center for Openness and Dialogue in Tirana, featuring work by five Magnum photographers spanning two decades: Canaj, Nikos Economopoulos, Alex Majoli, Carl de Keyzer and Martin Parr. Curated by Sylvia Sachini, the exhibition is titled “Things Take Time” and is a nod to the gradual reconstruction of the country over the years.
The first to travel to Albania were the Greek photographer Economopoulos, the British-born Martin Parr and the young Alex Majoli between 1990 and 1992, shortly before and immediately after the fall of the communist regime. At that time, it was still incredibly difficult for foreigners to enter the country, as Albania had been sealed off for decades. What lay behind this curtain remained a secret to much of the world.
For Econompoulos, his interest in documenting Albania was linked to this broader project that examined the less explored aspects of the fall of communism: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, the lives of minorities in Greece and the growing tensions in the former Yugoslavia. His work was published as a photo book, In the Balkansin 1995.
“One of the most interesting things I remember from that time is the bitter sarcasm and self-deprecating attitude towards the future that was found in Albania, which was, at least in my eyes, a healthier reaction (to the situation),” Economopoulos said in a Interview with Magnum around his work. “It was as if they didn’t take themselves so seriously, almost in awe of what they had endured and amazed at how long they had let it go on. Like children in a dystopian wonderland. Yet they brought themselves into the equation, taking on a role that brought with it at least some – belated – sense of agency and responsibility.”
Carl de Keyzer visited the country several years later, in 1995. In an earlier Square Print Sale, he reported on his trip: “When I first came to Albania in 1995, the country was not ready to accept visitors. After years of brutal communism that left it completely isolated from the outside world, there were only a few rooms available for visitors in the entire country.
“After passing through a very surreal border post (with a very corrupt guard) in an old camper van, we reached Korce where we stayed in the only hotel in town, a 12-story building with only four rooms on the eighth floor. The elevator didn’t work.
“Later in the trip, when we visited Durres, we stayed in a private room with a retired general who could not stop talking about the glory days of Albanian communism, when it withstood all pressure from the outside world. When I looked out my window, I could see a monument to the WWII resistance movement with children playing on it (pictured below). I couldn’t resist going there.
“In 2011 I visited the Albanian coast again. The whole area is now full of new hotels, terraces and bars.”
Alex Majoli travelled to Albania several times in the 1990s after graduating from art school in 1991. The exhibition shows a selection of images he took between 1991 and 1999 in different parts of the country, from small villages such as Theth in the north to the coastal town of Sarandë in the far south.
Pictured above is a group of young boys playing on a Victory Monument erected to commemorate Sali Berisha’s victory in the 1992 presidential election.
Almost a decade after his first visit, Martin Parr returned to Albania. In the caption to the photograph of a public telephone below, he wrote:
“This was taken a few weeks ago in Tirana, the capital of Albania. I haven’t been to Tirana since 1989 and I have never seen a city that has changed as dramatically in just 11 years as this one. It is practically unrecognisable – new cafes lining the streets, cars everywhere, westernised shops and a modernised telephone system. However, many Albanians still cannot afford these luxuries and so people on the street basically rent private phones. For a small amount of money you can make calls at a cheaper rate than in a phone booth. This phone was on a table in the middle of a kind of rubbish dump and most of the rubbish had been cleared away around it.”
For Canaj, who was born in Tirana but emigrated to Greece in 1991 at the age of eleven, returning to his home country to photograph there initially proved to be a challenge.
“What I left behind in Albania are many beautiful memories, and when I had a difficult time in Greece, I thought about it. I decided to return to Albania to find out what I had missed in the distance. The people here are nice and I felt like I was discovering myself. That’s why I enjoyed taking photos there so much,” he describes. “To tell the truth, what I kept from Albania were not concrete moments, but more of a fantasy. Therefore, the pictures I took are much more abstract.”
“Things Take Time” is on display at the Center for Openness and Dialogue in Tirana, Albania, until August 17. Plan your visit here.
