TIRANA, April 13 – On display in a deserted building in Tirana, an exhibition by German photographer Daliah Ziper is featuring Tirana in a special point of view “Behind facades and Geometric trees.”
“Through her photography, Daliah Ziper is reflecting upon the city of Tirana. Her observations take up a subject that is continuously present in her works: visibility and visualization. A motif and state of mind that from her point of view runs like a common thread throughout the city,” says the Tirana Ekspres alternative art space of Tirana.
Both of Ziper’s series, Behind the Facades and Geometric Trees represent a careful approach toward the city of Tirana and its inhabitants, but in the meantime a critical approach between the personal and the impersonal, curators say.
The Behind the Facades series does not focus on the chaotic and lively streets of Tirana, but takes a look on the quiet façades of the local houses, which the artist does not introduce as hermetical, but as walls with windows like surfaces with their openings. “Yet, one remains deprived of the opportunity to get into the house. Instead, some small details create the image of life lying within the secrecy. In the meantime, it soon becomes clear that Ziper’s pictures were taken from inside such a house, which makes the beginning and the destination of her observation, a personal point of view.”
In her Geometric Trees series, Ziper is based on a poem under the same title by Albanian author Anton Papleka, who faces the consequences of adaption and denial of himself. “Here, one can see geometrically cut decorative bushes, which the photographer has taken along the Lana river in Tirana. Shadows and not plants themselves are the focus of the pictures which sometimes get human characteristics.”
Likewise Papleka’s poem, Ziper’s pictures turn into metaphors. However, differently from the poet, Ziter considers the cut plants and their imposed nature from an emotional point of view.
The exhibition which is being staged at a deserted house in the Durres street will remain open to the public until April 17.