Albania, 2022
When my parents left their native land of Albania to move to Greece, a couple of years after the fall of the communist regime in 1991, I was about 3 years old. As a kid, they would often take me back to visit family and spend summers in Albania. But as I grew older, more and more years would pass between visits.
Returning to Tirana to see my father in February 2022 after 4 years of absence, I was surprised to see how much the city had changed. I could barely recognise entire areas. I therefore went in search of images I had somehow kept in my mind from childhood that would help feed my memory. I mostly found them in the familiar scenes of everyday life. Even though these pictures capture the Tirana of today, they also hold an element of the past.
In my images, I try to capture fragments of contrasts that stuck with me during my stay in Tirana. All of them were captured within one week, on the move with my father walking by my side. I like to think of them as a photographic journal, a record of my daily wanderings in this charming and ever-changing city. My Tiranë.
dephoted 