Transient Tirana

Tirana: an urban landscape in transforma- tion. Upheaval, reconstruction, new build- ing. A juxtaposition of old and new, of the unfinished and the partially destroyed. Hastily constructed cubes next to ruins of houses, unfinished and improvised, a mash-up of qualities, materials and styles. Humans reflected in this urban matrix.

“As Raymond Williams asserted, one of the special characteristics of capitalism is the conflict it creates between the needs of culture: the need to integrate the wishes and dreams of the subaltern in a mar- ket-appropriate form on the one side; and the need to maintain reverence and respect for cultural forms that legitimize existing inequalities on the other.”

See Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 99; quote from Barry King, “On the task of remembering: The search for the perfect moment,” in: Herta Wolf (publisher), Diskurse der Fotografie. Fotokritik am Ende des fotografischen Zeitalters (A Critique of Photography at the End of the Photographic Era), vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 173-214; here p. 173.

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