L’âge d’or de la photographie albanaise — La dynastie Marubi et les rhapsodes de lumière 1858-1945 — MEP, Maison européenne de la photographie — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 5, 2011 → January 8, 2012

Although Albania does not loom large in the history of world photography, it has a photographic heritage that is unique in the Balkans and which, until today, has been all but ignored both in the country itself and abroad.

This exhibition presents a century of outstanding and evocative pictures from a European country that has been exposed by the winds of history to eastern influences from the Ottoman empire. It features portraits of heroes or unnamed figures, studio compositions, landscapes, Christian and Muslim funerals, and scenes of daily life.

Albania, one of the toughest totalitarian regimes for almost half a century, is also the historic home of the aoidos or bards, wandering storytellers with inexhaustible memories whose origin goes back to the time of Homer. Worthy successors of these poets, the first Albanian photographers, rhapsodists of light, use pictures to tell the story of a world where history jostles with legend.

Curated by Loïc Chauvin and Christian Raby