TIRANA, Aug. 6 – London-based photographer Robert Hackman is showcasing his fascination with ‘lapidars’ and monuments and the Albanian post-socialist landscape in a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana.
“Lapidars, which are concrete monoliths on the one hand functioned as monuments commemorating a variety of “heroes of the nation” and “partisans,” but on the other also monumentalized the presence of the communist party in every part of the country,” says Dutch curator Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei who led the “Albanian Lapidar Survey” project involving archival research into the construction and topography of all lapidars in Albania and their historical context.
Hackman’s exhibition shows a selection of about thirty-five color photographs in medium size, which have in their focus a personal photographic journey of the London-based artist in Albania during the past few years.
This is not the first time that Hackman has undertaken such an exploration. Last year, he opened a solo exhibition at the National Historical Museum in Tirana that focused on the current state and metamorphosis of military bunkers built during the communist dictatorship in Albania.
It was during this outing focusing on the Albanian bunkers that Hackman “discovered” the next theme for his subsequent work.
“During these travels photographing the reuse and recycling of the military bunkers I became intrigued by the lapidars and public monuments. As each lapidar was unique in appearance initially I thought them unlike the bunkers, which were replicated on an industrial scale. The bunkers were predominantly a replication of the same story regardless of their location, the lapidars each had an individual story and reason for existence,” says Hackman.
Robert Hackman has been a professional photographer since the 2000s. Born in Australia, he moved to London in 1995, where he lives and works today. His work interest is focused on humanitarian, historical and religious issues. In addition to this work, he also is attracted to landscape and abstract photography. Hackman has held various exhibitions in London, Belgrade, Brazil, Georgia, Albania and Australia.
Hackman has been specializing on Albania and the Balkans for the last 14 years. His latest long-term project, the Bunker Albania exhibition, opened at the National History Museum in October 2014.
His newest “Lapidars and Monuments exhibition at the National Art Gallery will be open from August 6 to 31.
