TIRANA, Aug. 4 – A hundred years of Albanian studio photography from the Marubi Dynasty will be showcased at Amsterdam-based Foam museum. Curator Kim Knoppers, who also curated the first exhibition of the newly reconstructed and designed Marubi museum in the Albanian northern city of Shkodra, visited Albania last July to prepare the exhibition.
The exhibition is part of a series of exhibitions about photo studios that Foam has presented in recent years and reflects a growing interest over the past twenty years in vernacular photography and in its value both as social history and as art, says the Dutch museum.
Three generations of Marubi photographers made studio portraits of a wide variety of people, ranging from the urban bourgeoisie, shepherds, the Ottoman emperor and King Zog, to criminals and famous actors and painters.
In about 1850, not long after the invention of photography, the Italian Pietro Marubi arrived in Shkodà«r, the northern part of what is now Albania. There he started the first photography studio in the region, using the wet plate process. After Pietro’s death his assistant Kel adopted the same surname as a tribute to him. He ran the studio himself and eventually passed it on to his son Gegà«.
“The extensive collection of 150.000 glass negatives is interesting from an historical, sociological, cultural and anthropological as well as artistic point of view. Events from the turbulent history of Albania – from Ottoman times to the communist period -, social rituals, folkloric costumes and sociologically interesting group portraits can all be found in the collection. The exhibition is an introduction to the rich photographic history of an isolated European country that is often overlooked,” the museum says about the Marubi collection which has also gone virtual.
Amsterdam-based Foam is a relatively new and innovative museum that does not rely on public funding. Most of their income comes from ticket sales and corporate sponsors, an example which could benefit almost all state-run museums in Albania to become more entrepreneurial.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain open from September 16 to November 27.
