Albania of the '90s, in pictures of Robert Pichler

A coffin passing the stream! Is it empty or dead inside? It must be empty, for the step of the man holding the coffin feels so light and so precise on the rock as if it were a stilled butterfly to absorb supplies on a flower's mouth. The coffin must be empty, but the picture is too heavy on how much you feel like you swallowed a large gray cloud”.

This is the image that has focused on the picture that historian and anthropologist Robert Pichler realized more than two decades ago in Albania that had just knocked down the curtain of communism. So many years ago, it's the curator Edith Pula who recall these photos to memory, figuring out the “cctim exhibition in time. Albania of the 1990s”, which will open on 14 July at the Historical Museum Bajram Curri in Tropia.

The 90th <x0nd generation is years which, in addition to documenting important political events such as student protests, first democratic elections, hunger strikes, the fall of the dictator's monument, massive ecstasy on land and sea, or breaking up foreign embassies' fences to seek asylum, s'ad to have seen something else. Otherwise, our daily life remains very little exposed to our own eyes. I have found it fascinating that while we Albanians, we were only living these days without any conscious deepening in them, or unable to handle such devices as cameras to monitor our existence, a young Austrian student comes to Albania and does just that. He photographs the continuation of Albanian life, beyond the involvement of Albanians themselves in political events, what did we eat? Where were we sleeping? Where were we going? How did we get there? Where did we destroy and build? How did we die and get married?

Taking into account the timely recovery, which activates these photos, as well as the invitation to be temporarily positioned between the present and then, came up with the idea of creating a moving exhibition and opening it at an international bus station of Tirana line vans - Bayram Curri via Kosovo, will slide into the urban and rural roads of northern Albania, holding present travelers in their wombs and on the backs the evidence of then.

“Movement is thus the main point of view of this exhibition. Another is Albania's North, social relations, along with the lives of marginalised people of society. By means of Robert's pictures, we want to wake up the common memory, not as a nostalgic, but as a reference point for a time lacking in our minds! “, says the curator.

Edith Pula is an artist / curator from Tirana, who currently works as a cultural adviser to Mayor Tirana. Her curatorial work is mainly focused on Albanian heritage and the ways it can be represented in contemporary form. Last year it was invited by MuCEM- (Museu of Mediterranean and European civilisations) to use the collection of 800 Albanian objects found in MuCEM. Robert Pichler shows that he first visited Albania as a student in 1989.

At the time, it was already clear that the communist project had failed -- the economy was rotting and society was under constant scrutiny.” The people we met were scared but curious to meet with us. My first trip has left a mark on me, my self - confidence challenged, but I was tempted to return to this country as soon as possible.

This opportunity emerged in the spring of 1992, when I received a six-month scholarship to conduct research into social changes in northern Albania. However, conditions during this time had changed dramatically. Albania was facing a noisy transformation, which made my focus on research difficult; I too was absorbed by political unrest. It was a total resumption but not knowing where that road would lead.

For many others, it was a struggle for survival to cover the most basic needs, but there was also an extraordinary incentive and desire for what had been so long refused, freedom to think, move, express itself, and consume the achievements of technological modernisation. The country was flooded with goods from abroad, the pressure of the movements appeared violently, and cars, trucks, bikers, carts, passersby moved through the streets that returned to the caravans, and markets rose from all sides”, Pichler relates.

To him, it was a return to circumstances that he knew only through stories told by his grandparents: supplies pressed in food, water, and electricity, but at the same time there was an extraordinary attempt to recover something new. I had often heard people say that Albania can return to the Balkan Switzerland, conditions had always been present, even though fate had not made it easy for the country, but now is its time.

When everything went on the road ahead, I was immersed in researching historical ties, I wanted to explore the past, the reasons for this particular journey, but also the social chasm, the fates of those left alone and the outcasts. The attention, interest, and respect I received increased my curiosity in the history of the country and made me return regularly from that time on”, says Pichler.

Robert Pichler is a historian and photographer. The main areas of his research are family and family relations, migration and Transnationalism, as well as political history of the 19th and 20th century in Southeast Europe. He is currently a researcher at the Balkan Research Department at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, as well as a teacher at the Southeast European Studies Centre in Graz. / KultPlus. com