Creative: Albania Project Part One

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Serious, focused photography isn’t something I do much these days. Documentary photography, at least the way I do it, which would be considered “old school” by many, is far from easy and massively time-consuming. Ingredients that don’t jive well with modern life. Hence, there aren’t that many people doing it these days.

The first successful double which is now the cover of my “Deklasifikuar” magazine. Both images are from the streets of Tirana.

Twenty years ago documentary photography changed dramatically. With the arrival of limited budgets and far less field time, the documentary still world morphed from reality-based imagery to the crafted and the staged. Not entirely but in great part.

Environmental portraits became the flavor of the month, almost overnight, as photographers began to have their assignment times shortened. Even the major players in documentary publication saw sharp drops in allotted budget and assignment time. What was once a six-month assignment soon became ten weeks then eight weeks, then six weeks and things didn’t stop there. A good friend was a powerhouse shooter in this world, on staff for decades at one of the most sought after addresses, who told me his last assignment before he quit photography, was six countries in eighteen days. This is NOT how you make original work. Readership also fell dramatically but for some reason the powers that be never seemed to put this together. Can’t imagine what it is like today.

A combination of the skyline of Skhoder and the castle sitting above the city.

I’m not an environmental portrait photographer. I’ve done many but that is not what I do when left alone. What I do is watch and wait, for extended periods, looking for REAL moments in the light I know I need to work in. This is a skill and not something you turn on and off in real-time. You might wait for days and not get the gift you were looking for. You might have to work the same location again and again, and when everyone is looking for an instant reward this isn’t healthy for mind or body. But this is still how I prefer to work. If I haven’t worked in a while I am very sloppy and slow when I first try to restart the photographic fire. I SEE images I should be making but I’m just not in tune quite yet. This can be frustrating when you know you have limited time and opportunities.

Knowing this going in I had very low expectations for my work from Albania. I knew little about the country, knew I would be on the move the vast majority of the time and knew I had nowhere near enough time to wait it out. I also knew my photography was soft around the midsection, to be expected with little as little ring time as I’ve had of late. (Boxing reference people, it’s the sweet science after all.)

What did I have going for me and how did I manufacturer some luck? Good question and thank you so much for asking. Two things. First, I write, daily. Mostly garbage, but I write and I’m an observer. I listen. And I write what I hear. Writing for me is the high art, the transcendent medium that lives far above any other form of communication, outside of perhaps verbal. So I knew I could really focus and make sure I put pen to paper every single day. Writing and observing would make me FEEL like I was making progress which might not seem that important but it really is. When you feel like something is forming it provides visual direction, and sometimes that is all we need.

Combo of Lake Skhodra and the surrounding landscape. This was an important body of water, the largest in the Balkans that separates Albania and Montenegro.

Second, I did research. Nothing investigative or specific to the locations I knew I would visit but very much in regard to the history of Albania while attempting to find THE key element I could play on. And with Albania, this was quite easy. The entire country was cut off from the outside world during a forty-year stretch of dictatorial rule. It was bad. If you tried to escape and were caught you were executed. If you made it out your family was punished or executed. Russia was the overlord for much of the time, but after difficulties, the Russians left and were replaced by the Chinese who in some ways made things even worse. In the mid-1990s the country finally opened up and since then they have been trying to find their way.

Albania has a ghost, as do all other countries, but I felt the ghost of communism and dictatorial rule were the elements I needed to incorporate. So, my solution was double exposures, something I’ve NEVER done in my thirty years of making pictures. Sure, I’d made the occasional double exposure while playing around, or the happy accident but never as the primary means of telling a story. I committed to this idea while still in the United States then took the travel time to further consider my technique. The idea was one image representing the past and the other the uncertain future. (Dramatic, I know.)

I immediately had to adapt. It became apparent the very first morning while walking the streets of Tirana my original idea of how I would capture the doubles needed to change. I try not to ever look at images in the field, ever. It’s a bad idea and an almost guarantee you aren’t connecting at the level you need to. So, I waited until I was back in my hotel room, made my download and began to study what worked and what didn’t.

The first image was made moments before boarding a ferry in Komen and the second was made during the three-hour ferry ride. The haircuts and tracksuits were essential for me. They are standard ware in Albania and remind me of the Balkans in general.

My original idea was to double up the exact same image, almost like a blur, but the problem was it looked, well, like a blur. I don’t particularly like blur. There were images that worked but what I realized was I needed to incorporate two entirely different scenes in one double exposure. This created a new set of issues or requirements. The XT2 has a double exposure setting which works incredibly well. You fire the first frame and that frame freezes in the finder with a menu asking if you are happy with that image. If so you hit “Okay” and then recompose. Simple right? But what if you need to wait a half hour to find that second image? What is your battery life? What if your first exposure is a slam dunk but then you see another stand alone image that you have to have. You can’t have both. So, I learned on the fly and began to refine my technique.

Things like density, exposure, and movement began to work in ways I’d never dreamed. I know what you are thinking. “Dan, this is a gimmick.” You are correct. It is. But I looked at this as a gimmick that fit my philosophy about what I was doing. But I have to admit, a part of me thought “Really?” “This is what you are going to do?” So, I also made a commitment to try and capture TEN stand-alone images over the two-week timeframe, a lot to ask but a secondary self-assigned informal goal. What I didn’t expect was what happened when I began to see the images float across my laptop screen. I knew I was on the right path.

What else? I began to design my magazine while still in country. I downloaded, edited and designed every time I came to a stop. More than anything else this was entertaining and also a self-imposed test if you will. Are you good enough? Can you still do this? What is working? What isn’t? How are you going to handle the copy? What are you going to use for the front matter? How are you going to mix the doubles, the copy, and the ten stand-alone images?

And people this magazine(photo-book, trade-book) has NO life outside of my own personal coffee table if I had a coffee table. I have no intention of selling this publication or even showing this publication outside of using it here to explain to YOU how I did it, why I did it and how and why you should be doing your own. I will print the first test copy sometime this week. The test copy will be FAR from polished.

Something else I had to consider. I had no title for the project when I landed in Albania. But two days later I found it and knew it immediately when I saw it. “Deklasifikuar,” which means “Declassified.” I visited something called “The House of Leaves,” which was the primary surveillance hub for the regime. It’s a museum now. And the title and font were right there in front of me. It was a good moment, a reflection of things coming together, slowly.

Roadway and waterway near Valbona in the Albanian Alps also known as The Cursed Mountains.

I never once got up for a sunrise. Not once. Instead, my mornings would begin sometime between 5:30 AM and 6:30 AM. I would venture to get coffee and write. Writing takes a different mental space for me. My head has to be free of all other thoughts. I then start to visualize a singular moment, most often entirely obscure things like a finch landing on a chair at the hotel. And then it begins. The words just begin to flow. This is classic stream of consciousness writing, NOT journalism. My story will have ONE short piece of journalism and the rest will be personal reflection. After all, I’m not teaching you the history of Albania. I’m trying to convey feeling.

Our group would saddle up and off we would go. Sometimes this meant long rides in the van, long ferry rides, long bike rides or just long, hot treks on foot. I shot the Fuji XT2 with the 35mm, 50mm equivalent, the entire trip. I never once used another lens. I gave my wife my second body and the 23mm. I carried a 56mm 1.2 but never used it. I also carried four extra batteries and nine stops of neutral density filters and a tiny tripod and used both extensively. I didn’t make a single image with my phone. Upon arrival in country, I powered down my phone, stashed it in my suitcase and didn’t look at it for two weeks. Heaven.

Stay tuned for part two.

Comments 21

  1. Thanks Dan for sharing your Albania experience with us. It’s so refreshing to read about your approach to photography and journaling in a day and age where people think an Instagram photo and caption with emojis will suffice. I’ll be honest I’m struggling with journaling, sometimes I go weeks and months without writing in my journal. I’ve tried an online journaling via an app, but it just doesn’t scratch that itch, I want to put pen to paper and live a life unpixelated if you will where I can. Looking forward to part two of Albania.

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      Tracy,
      I can’t even imagine going back on IG or engaging while in another culture while trying to make work. I think IG is one of the most harmful devices ever created. With your journal, just start small and forget everything you know. It’s not about quality, quantity or anyone else. Start by describing something you are looking at.

  2. Look, like you said, documentary takes a long time. You should get out of your comfort zone and try to do something different. Use a different part of your brain. Who says that double exposures won’t reveal more than the documentary. It’s good to see you stretch your wings and push yourself. Even if it was just an experiment or if this is a whole new avenue for your work. The point is, don’t limit yourself and don’t settle.

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      AK,
      Agreed. I like the work I work. I like the writing perhaps more than the images but I still like the images and will use this again at some point.

  3. Great to hear all about your gear… kidding of course. Yesterday, I attended a presentation from a great Ukrainian photographer on aesthetics of ballet photography and I was just shaking my head hearing all the gear and software questions. Got a little sidetracked here…

    Truly, I love hearing about your thought process behind what you do and your experiments. Writing, I have to write more in my journal. Trade book, I have to try that one it might just work for something I have in mind. 35mm is awesome, if I were to stick a lens permanently on my camera it would be my 35mm.

    Love this line, “how did I manufacturer some luck?” I do believe all great photographer has been lucky in capturing the moments they captured but it’s a luck they created by experience.

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  4. That second image from the top, blend of Skhoder skyline and and the castle, looks so much like a map!

    Something about the way those double exposures looked made me really uncomfortable at the start. But I looked at them for a while (does this happen on the internet?!), and being able to resolve all the little details with all those troublesome lines, is giving me lots of food for thought. Looking forward to the other parts.

    On a not so related note: I left journalling for months after the coming to northern Iraq, in the midst of the madness of moving, and real job and whatnot. BIG MISTAKE. My head’s been a mess and nothing has been coalescing. I’ve begun journalling again and the world is finally starting to stabilize.

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      Charlene,
      More on the way. The publication is rounding out nicely. I think the doubles worked well but in tandem with the copy and the static images they are even better. I’ve been trying to journal as much a possible. For some reason, it’s easier here in NW but I’m guessing that is because my life is so much more complete.

  5. Pingback: Creative: The Albania Project, Part Three - Shifter

  6. Pingback: Create: Albania Magazine, v1 - Shifter

  7. Hope in part 2 you cover how you addressed the XT2 multiple exposure dilemma. Coincidentally I shot one today. It’s on my IG @sbhopper . No, it’s not earth shattering. But I saw musician Julien Baker’s beautiful landing page and an amazing multiple exposure and wanted to try something.

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      Scott,
      I’m not going back on IG again, ever. It’s just not for me. I don’t like social, or the Internet for the most part. I don’t find any of it helpful when it comes to making work. I think it most often stymies people because it floods their brain with images and then that muddies the water. I went to the double exposures based on the subject matter I was photographing. The story dictated my technique. I needed something to represent a country that was actually two countries in one. That’s really the gist of it.

  8. I hear you about the internet and social. I was a latecomer to it. I’ve found some good and some bad, but I think long term, the bad outweighs the good by a large margin. I’m striving for more analog, in everything. With respect to the double exposure dilemma, I meant the issue when you hit ok on the first image, but you wouldn’t get to the second image until much later, and would possibly want to shoot other photos in between. What was your work around (in general)?

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  9. Daniel, maybe I overlooked – but have you been to the Marubi Museum in Shkodra? It‘s absolutely stunning. (While I‘m here: thanks for all the input, I really like your work and your enthusiasm about printing.) Greetings from Berlin

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      Hendrik,

      Berlin!! I’ve never been and it’s annoying me that I have yet to make it happen. I was SUPPOSED to go Marubi but the day we scheduled our entire workshop class rode bikes all along the lake. It was 100 degrees. By the time we were done all we wanted to was Pringles and beer. The museum lost out!

  10. Hi daniel, thanks for a sharing albania story.
    Are you going to make a workshop in albania, some time after the coronavirus?

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      Shlomi,
      Yes. That is the plan, but we are looking at 2021. I will start posting as soon as I know the details….

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      I don’t hate it when it works. I’m wouldn’t call what I’m doing urban abstract landscape. But that’s me.

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