Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
The 20-ties. This is also Albania. It is an undeniable fact that Albania of the first decades of the 20th Century, had very little to be envied from the viewpoint of the general standard of well being. The Turkish Empire had left this forsaken corner of the Empire to its own fate, together with the backward independence due to the local economy, ravaged by a World War which did not spare a single corner of the country, and all this helped form the kind of pictures you see here, by no means rare for the roads of the country. However, it must be stressed that here we have to do with unfortunate representatives of the poorer strata of society; beggars, and the poverty stricken loners.
In the first photo is a highlander, living in solitude, in a cave turned into a makeshift place of abode, somewhere in the mountains of the North. Having emerged from the darkness of the cave , this figure with a goat hide thrown over his shoulder, looks as though he has been catapulted by mistake from the Stone Age to the 20th Century.
The second photo was taken by an Austrian officer and on the back are written the words, “Albanian beggar called FUKURA.” The word “Fukura” is in Albanian. The third photo has an exceptional human charge. The sense of love, presented through this couple, who, traipsing through the dust like this make one think they are on their last legs in this life; the sorrowful looks of the two persons; the utter exhaustion their bent figures convey; the way the hands of the old woman hang down, her back bent beneath the weight of her load; the walking stick of the old man, his slightly tilted head; altogether this portrays an endless human drama. None the less, even in this general state of deplorable sorrow, the elderly couple do struggle for a little dignity. The old woman walks slightly behind the old man, she carries the heavy burdens, the old man wears opinga (flat leather footwear used by villagers), he carries a walking stick, possessions his wife does not own. Obviously, life has not been kind to these poor old people, whose remains, at least today, after so many years, finally rest in peace in some corner of Albania and probably without graves. It is a shame that this photo does not bear the name of the person who took the photo, because it is obvious that this was a very professional take.