“The Albanians are rough and backward people. Almost as soon as they are born someone puts a gun into their cradle, so that it shall become an integral part of their existance.”
“Yes, you can see that,” the general said. “They even hold their umbrellas as though they were guns.”
“And by becoming from earliest childhood an ingredient of their very being,” the priest went on, “ a fundamental constituent of their lives, the gun has exercised a direct influence on the Albanians psychological development.”
“How intresting.”
“But if you cultivate what amounts to a sort of religion around any object, then naturally you feel a desire to use it. And what is the best use to which you can put a gun?”
“Killing, of course,” the general said.
“Exactly. And the Albanians have always had a taste for killing or getting themselves killed. Whenever they haven’t been able to find an enemy to fight they’ve turned to killing one another. Have you heard about their vandettas?”
“Yes.”
“Its an atavistic instinct that drives them into war. Their nature requires war, cries out for war. In peace, the Albanian becomes sluggish and only half alive, like a snake in the winter. It is only when he is fighting that his vitality is at full stretch.”
The general nodded accordingly.
from the book The general of the dead army by Ismail Kadare.
Studies on Albanian identity is a one piece of art that consists of 24 individual images put together. I photographed the piece during my NIFCA-recidency in Tirana, Albania during October-November 2004.
The work is dealing with the feeling that was very eyecatching: the strange violence-based orientation that hides underneath the surface in Albania. Within the strong sense of Albanian nationality there is also aggressivity around. Guns at homes, a lot of military around, a lot of nationalistic even agressive energy put into football matches, great stories are told about violent national heroes, etc. But the orientation is not only aggressive, but also somehow nostalgic and sentimental at the same time. The passage above from Ismail Kadare somehow reflects my thinking in very pure ways.
With my photography I tried to depict that atmosphere, make some images concerning that particular subjective feeling. I can’t make this observation to be fully true, and I admit, that the series is a kind of foreigner’s view. Nevertheless, since my observations are in close contact to Kadare’s writings, I can’t be totally mistaken either.