Photographs by Corinna Sauer, Sebastián Laraia, Jeffrey Ladd, Holger Biermann, Shinji Abe, Patrick Becker, Jiri Makovec, Dimitri Mellos, Richard Sandler, Gilles Roudière, Roger Minick, Jan Zappner, Georg Knoll, Andreas Pein, Jan Michalko, Jonathan van Smit, Jia Jia Zhang, hannah goldstein and Charlie Jouvet.

at TÊTE art space in Berlin 15 march 2013

artist talks 20 march 2013 – Jan Zappner, Corinna Sauer and Holger Biermann

The Museum of Photography in Görlitz

Exhibition from 28 july to 24 August 2012

Löbauer Straße 7, 02826 Görlitz/Germany

located at the former ground of the camera
manufacture Ernst Herbst & Firl, producer of
atelier- and travel cameras between 1893 and 1919.

Exhibition of photographs seen on miraprospekt.com by Patrick Becker, Holger Biermann, Georg Knoll, Sebastián Laraia, Jan Michalko, Andreas Pein,
Gilles Roudière and Jan Zappner

> Download PDF

22 June to 16 September 2012

The Albanian Ambassador in Vendome:
> read the article (in french only)

Albania is terrific and fascinating.

Albania has a bewitching soul that cannot fail to haunt you; it exhales something mysterious, a sort of indescribable magic. The beating streams of a Mediterranean sunlight, the meeting with unlikely landscapes, the smoke from burning wild rubbish dumps rising up into the air, the whirls of dust in towns and the sandstorms along the coasts lend the land a specific atmosphere and a strong personality. A kind of chaos prevails in the country, from out of which seeps fantasism; Albanians are probably keener to follow traditional conventions than a modern legislation. Mutual aid, honour, respect and hospitality are finally the true driving forces of the nation, building up a strong common thread that connects people to each other and to their territory.

What mattered to me was my desire to capture my own intimate experiences of the country, my inner-feelings, steering clear of Roland Barthes’ qualified “studium”. More than any classical documentary issue it is Albania as a photographic theatre with its inhabitants performing in their daily scenery that my images intend to reveal.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

I travelled to Albania, even though I didnt have a connection to either the Eastern Block countries or to the Balkans.  It was just a white spot, and not only on my map but also in my imagination. Directly in front of my house door, in the middle of Europe.

It fascintated me to travel to places that didn’t actually interest me.

That was exactly how I felt.
Like a fish out of water.

It seemed to be a country ruled by a dictator and whose culture seems to have been completely erased. Unable to see something, it left me completely bored.
I saved myself by running from Coffee to köfte, from köfte to Raki and from Raki into my bed and then awoke to start again.
This land seemed to me to be so heavy and still.

I caught a frame, that  pushed me to discover something interesting in the hope that this overall feeling of „nothingness“ would not overtake me.  But in the end, nothing happened and I was worn down, but also sure that something would come again.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

I am interested in how movement through cityscapes influences people, how architecture and light make shifting patterns over the surface of the city, how there are atmospheric blackholes of new feelings. I am interested in the habits of a city. In these photographs, narrative exists no more than a moment. Context is the content: how Cairo’s daily life looks.

contact: email web

Group Project
SAFARI SIZE
Photographs from Cairo

Four photographic positions show a different and personal view on the Egyptian Metropol Cairo.
A subtle and personal presentation of reality connects the photographic document in all four works.

• Holger Biermann
• Georg Knoll
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein

Andreas Pein

Although a country’s history is certainly not comparable to another one’s, i couldn’t help but notice a few similarities. Infact, Albania evoke well‐known, almost forgotten feelings within me. Not only because i was born and raised in the former socialistic East‐Germany, also due to a sort of numb feeling, still noticeable as an impact of the harsh dictatorship in Albania. I guess it have been these feelings i was trying to make visible. But aside all subjects i was trying to photograph in Albania, to me, these pictures have unexpectedly become a visualization of memories and feelings of my own past.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

These pictures are loose photographic collection of moments throughout the last three years. Its an Essay about a country with spectacular nature and people with a raw personality still recovering from the „Years of the gun“, when an exodus of millions hit society. I met children raised in Britain, Germany or France and now being expelled to a remote village in the mountains. The  desparate view of the people on the future unites them as much as their ability to make the best out of nothing. I could feel the strength it takes to live on the edge, yet unknown to most of Europe.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

All pictures were taken in
Cairo between 2009 and 2012

contact:   email   web

Group Project
SAFARI SIZE
Photographs from Cairo

Four photographic positions show a different and personal view on the Egyptian Metropol Cairo.
A subtle and personal presentation of reality connects the photographic document in all four works.

• Holger Biermann
• Georg Knoll
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein

The pictures were taken on 5 short-trips in different parts, mainly towns, of Albania. Huge Mountains and ancient traditions still mighty, as the heaviness of the weight of Hoxha’s dictaturship, it seems there was left a tabula rasa. This, in its resting Lethargie, has been filled in a cheap way with american and european status-symbols and its infrastructure. Not at least of the many emmigrants sending money home, there is a big affinity to the west. Daily life is very often a fight against poverty and corruption.
My photography is a short personal visual meeting with this country. Without any judgements I want to transfer the inspiration I got in this great Balcan-culture.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

by Holger Biermann

I walked through this seemingly endless city in may 2009. These photographs suggest more than any of my words could possibly tell. It’s the gaze of a stranger, an aimless tourist prowling on the streets.

I weren’t on familiar terms with Cairo’s inhabitants. Their ideas, political or private views remained unknown to me. Mubarak ruled and that was it. To think of a radical change or a revolution seemed improbable to me then.

Once I got arrested for snapping a huge dark limousine in the parliament district. The cops confiscated my film and my camera before they locked me up. The precincts room was small and damp but orderly. I was sitting on a wooden chair and watched an incessant company of flies. After 2 hours the officer returned my camera and released me with an admonition back to the streets. But otherwise?

I remember vividly that the oppressive heat and a permanent diarrhea were too often master of the situation..

contact:   email   web

Group Project
SAFARI SIZE
Photographs from Cairo

Four photographic positions show a different and personal view on the Egyptian Metropol Cairo.
A subtle and personal presentation of reality connects the photographic document in all four works.

• Holger Biermann
• Georg Knoll
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein

The photographs are of ordinary Albanian life. I wanted to capture the mood of the times and the realities of daily life. These photos focus inwards on the individual and outwards on the general milieu in the cities. They capture the interaction between people and their environment at work, at leisure and going about their daily lives. We see the asthetic juxtapose of socialist past and the newer touches of Western influences characterized by an explosion and bright colours and the sporadic introduction of new technologies.

contact:   email   web

Group Project: ALBANIA

What happens in Albania? The former closed Communist country with its long undiscovered coastline and spectacular Alpine interior retains an air of mystery in the midst of familiar old Europe. Albania is the close neighbour of Italy and Greece but, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has kept its secrets from us for too long.

This exhibition combines the work of six photographers based in Berlin, who for three years have been regularly exploring Europe’s least-known nation. They have immersed themselves in its unique and complex society successively moulded by the long period of Ottoman rule, the autocratic grip of communism and today by the excitement of emerging as a new democracy into modern Europe.

The idea of the project was to create a picture diary of a nation familiar by name but whose lifestyle, whose people and whose dreams are only slowly revealing themselves. Each of the photographers has followed his own unique approach to tell an unfolding story of discovery through images and other media.

This long-term project could never produce a straightforward narrative or even a journalistic documentation of a place as intriguing as Albania. Instead we offer six essays that build into a mosaic to capture what we found in a land just a short way away, but far from familiar.

• Georg Knoll
• Sebastián Laraia
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein
• Gilles Roudière
• Jan Zappner

As one of the main axes the multi-level-street Sharia Ramses cuts a big part of central Cairo. On three short-trips I followed this „vene“, discovering parts of the arabian Megacity in the days before the revolution, winding between „Ramses“ and „Sharia“, 2006 to 2010.

contact:   email   web

Group Project
SAFARI SIZE
Photographs from Cairo

Four photographic positions show a different and personal view on the Egyptian Metropol Cairo.
A subtle and personal presentation of reality connects the photographic document in all four works.

• Holger Biermann
• Georg Knoll
• Jan Michalko
• Andreas Pein

Opening 27.01.2012, 8 pm.
Exhibition 28.01 – 05.02.2012, Sat/Sun. 4 – 8 pm
at Kulturpalast Wedding International
Freienwalder Strasse 20
13359 Berlin, Germany
www.kulturpalastwedding.com
info[at]kulturpalastwedding.com

Opening 15 april 2011
Group show 16 april – 08 june 2011

AE Gallery
Hermann-Elflein-Strasse 18
Luisenforum
14467 Potsdam
Germany