Balkan

Year 2018
Category Photography
Series: Portrait of a City

I like the way of experiencing places, through images, as if I am walking around in solitude. Peacefully, observing details, exploring lines, layers, materials and textures. Pondering what makes up a structure, inhabiting space, buildings – a whole city.
My interest in history, as well as architecture and texture, has constructed a sort of bucket-list of old towns with a specific type of architecture that I want to explore and learn from during my lifetime. This series is an attempt to do so.

Although the images are carefully avoiding the people inhabiting the different places visited, they are never untouched by them and are often inspired by conversations, tips and observations along the way.

This ongoing series aims to explore the great Balkan region through its diverse architectonic styles, history and territorial attributes. It started with a curiosity of the prejudice these countries and their inhabitants face in the western world, and a need to travel down and experience the region with a curious and open mind.

Including images from Herceg-Novi and Kotor in Montenegro, Belgrade in Serbia, as well as Berat and Tirana in Albania – to name a few.

UNESCO protected cities
The city of Berat is 2400 year old and has been UNESCO protected since 2008. It is is widely known as The White City and the name derived from the old Bulgarian (meaning “White City”) under which name it was known in Greek, Bulgarian, Latin, and Slavic documents during the High and Late Middle Ages.

Kotor has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979, not only for the historied mountains and pristine bay waters, but also for architecture stretching back to the Middle Ages. However, in July 2016, UNESCO gave the region just under a year to curb thoughtless seafront development in order to keep its World Heritage status. The ongoing increase of European tourists, after conscious efforts made by the country itself, has also been another big threat to the city’s infrastructure.