The journey through Albania’s abandoned communist sites is not only a photographic one. It combines also oral testimonies of people who experienced these particular places during the communist period, or who are today engaged in adaptive reuse projects. The goal is both to restore the collective and historical memory connected to these sites and to rethink and re-image them as a cultural landscape and a source for local development. These ruins of a recently collapsed political system (“forbidden zones” whose past is still visible) can be explored by artists, planners, architects, local community representatives and activists as sites for public art, cultural reclamation, tourism, local handicraft production and other adaptive reuse.
Check here where to buy it or how to order online.
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I wanted to meet these people, wondering if I could be of any help. I went with my friends working for Caritas to the refugee camps in Gevgeljia, the first Macedonian town after the border with Greece, and in Presevo, the closest Serbian town to the border with Macedonia. (You can have a look at some more of my pictures also on Caritas Internationalis Album)
I met hundreds of people. A stream of people heading north, receiving primary care in the camps, being halted by the police, but only in order to be registered for a couple of hours before making way for other behind them. More than four thousands migrants per day are crossing these countries: every ten minutes 50 people cross the borders. This has been happening every day, 24/7, for months…
Even though I was only there a few days, I met hundreds of men, women and children. I met a woman who didn’t know in which country she was: she just followed the crowd. I met a group of young boys who were still deciding where to go once they arrived in the EU, I met others who instead were very sure about their destination. I met refugees with excellent English, with a British accent – doctors, professors, students that had left everything behind.
And then I saw them. They were at the entrance of the camp, queuing with their parents: two little twin boys. Same age as my twin daughters. I followed them into the UNICEF tent. While their mother was changing one of them, I started to play with the other one. I played the same games I play with my Rosa and Alma. That was the moment I took this picture. Our game lasted some minutes and nothing else mattered: it was just him and me, my daughters safely at home, his long journey behind and his long travel still ahead.
Last summer, while discussing with my friend Valerio (he is working hard on documenting this emergency) we agreed that nowadays the most revolutionary act is to try to illegally cross a border, especially an EU border. An act rooted in despair and fear for one’s life. If we, from this side of the fence, fail to save them from the scourge of war at home, they stand up and demand from us to protect their rights in the only way we permit them: by crossing our borders.
This has already happened millions of times. Everywhere. An individual, revolutionary act of secretly crossing imaginary lines that separate human beings.
This time it’s different; no one is hiding. They cross the border with their head held high, in the daylight. No one is stopping them. The revolutionary act of crossing borders is being undertaken by thousands of people, every day, for months now. All these people together have the power to force the EU to open its borders, to grant them protection, to rethink EU foreign policies and home affairs. In doing so, they are clearly demonstrating the failure of our closed-borders policy and the absurdity of our system to process asylum seekers. The marching taking place right now in the Balkans is not only a desperate flow of migrants, it is a revolution.
Ps. It took me more than a month to write down these few lines. Sometimes it’s very hard for me to explain feelings and moving experiences by writing. That’s way I photograph.
]]>I loved Carter’s Cathedral and I had jealously kept it in my bookshelf, with all books I like the most. Then, when I bought ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ I was equally amazed by the book and its cover!! Published in 2009 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Vintage Contemporaries, the cover is in fact one of my favorite Hido’s photos!
I had had never associated these two artists (and their works) together before. With this little amazing object in my hands I realized they go explored the same weaknesses and hopes of life, its regrets and resentments. They were both capable of picturing the daily struggle of living, the inexorable passing of time, the lyrics of abandoned places.
This is when I found out that there is a lot of Hido’s work in Carter’s novels. You read Carter and you see Hido’s intimate nudes and broken hoses, televisions always on, unmade beds, empty rooms and the perpetual feeling of cold and damp. Beside houses at night (and his famous “House Hunting” monograph), there are his interiors of motels and foreclosed homes as well as his landscapes full of loneliness, melancholy and beauty.
It is a perfect fit, as Hido himself writes in his book “On Landscapes, Interiors and The Nude” (which is by the way an interesting and inspiring book as well as all the Aperture photography workshop series):
“When I read his (Carver) writing, I see pictures and think of all these ideas for photographs. A few year ago, his publisher was reeditioning the books and asked me me if I would considering allowing them to use my picture for the covers. I had to pretend I was mildly interested, so I didn’t end up giving them all the photos for free. But I knew it was a perfect fit. This cover is my favorite of all of them. My picture of an apartment building with a light on upstairs and tire tracks in the snow from a car pulling out of the driveway is exactly the kind of thing we talk about when we talk about love. The picture contains the ingredients of a story: it places the retreating tracks in relationship with the window and invites the viewer to pay attention and think about what might have just happened”.
This perfect fit, however, is not a perfect union. You somewhat have to give up something, either the picture or the story. Are you going to open and read the book, or do you prefer to close it and enjoy Hido’s picture?
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From Shkodra, it took us 2 hours of unpaved tiny road in the middle of a beautiful nowhere to reach Kir, a little rural village. The voting center was settled in an elementary school, a decrepit, abandoned-like building with no flooring, broken roof and windows.
Nobody lives there anymore, since many years, people have abandoned those mountains moving in the suburbs of Shkodra looking for a job, but also for primary needs like electricity and running water. The majority of them did not change the residency: they could have some little subsidy for the fact that they (pretend to) live in remote areas.
Because of that they are still registered in the electoral list of Kir. Political parties, in order to let them vote (for them), organize free shuttle buses from Shkodra to bring them in Kir.
I took the picture of these people waiting at the voting center of a town, a school, a community that almost does not exist anymore..
Ps. two years ago, during parliamentary election that has given an historical win to the left wing I did a Reportage on Osservatorio Balcani e Causaso, the best online italian magazine about Balkan and Caucasus region.
]]>At the moment I can start only from my need: sharing thought about photography (thus sharing feelings) with all those people I physically cannot easily meet for a beer (or a rakjia) tonight.
They, I mean you, can come here whenever you’d like, and I promise to you (and to myself as well) that you will find news, suggestions, visions and rhythms. It could be about myself, about subjects related to my on going projects, about photos I took and those someone else took (and I wish he was me!), about inspiring works, exhibitions, opportunities, festivals!
And then, since we are having something close to a beer (o a rakjia) together, I would love to get back from you comments, ideas, tips, proposals and recommendations. One word or hundreds lines, private or public feedbacks, congrats or critics to posts and photos, please leave something when you pass by, do not hesitate to disturb here, I don’t like drinking alone!
photo credit: Marco Iegri, drinking rakjia in Mitrovica (2007)
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