This photographic project focuses on the Albanians of Kosova, a province of the former Yugoslavia. Some of the people I met on my first two trips there now live in Austin, Texas, having been forced to leave by the Serbs during the civil war in 1999. I continue to document their lives here and life in Kosova itself, returning there on a yearly basis.
“Into the mystic” might be the best way to describe my first trip to this region of the Balkans. I knew not one Albanian and, in 1992, no guidebooks were available. That situation changed upon my return to Austin, where I began to connect with the small Albanian community. One of the people I met was a woman from Kosova, Aferdita Dauti, the wife of an Austin doctor; they met in Prishtina, the capital of Kosova, where he was working for Doctors without Borders. After I had made several trips to Albania, she urged me to expand my project into neighboring Kosova, then part of the former Yugoslavia and 90 percent Albanian, most of them nominally Muslim.
Yugoslavia granted autonomy to the province of Kosova in 1974; in 1989, after increasing calls for independence by the Albanian majority, the Serbian government revoked that autonomy. Albanian Kosovars lost their jobs and schools and were subjected to harassment and worse for the most minor offenses.
Although they share a similar ethnic make-up, Albania and Kosova resonate differently; I realized that after being detained by Serbian officials in Prishtina in 1996. My crime? Taking a photo of the television station. Ethnic Albanians had no rights in Yugoslavia after 1989; I, a foreigner, had none either, as this encounter made me understand. Meanwhile, life in Albania was over the top; everyone figured on being millionaires soon, as they poured more and more leks into pyramid investment schemes. In 1997, when those schemes crashed, anarchy followed. Weapons stolen at that time eventually made their way into the hands of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) next door.
My friend Aferdita taught me a few things about Kosova, a place I didn’t know existed until I met her and her extended family. They welcomed me, a stranger, into their lives and became my family, my home away from home. Dita has been the key to my understanding Kosova and the Albanians. Her family’s journey from Kosova to Texas is the inspiration for this project. During our long friendship I have witnessed the birth of her son, danced at a cousin’s engagement party and wept at the death of friends who died at too early an age.
With the emergence of the KLA in 1998, the balance between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosova began to change. The conflict between the two ethnicities, simmering for years, now boiled out of control. The Serbs went after the rebels with a vengeance, slaughtering whole families suspected of having KLA ties. Thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced to flee to other countries. The United States and its allies resolved to stop yet another orgy of ethnic cleansing, and on March 24, 1999, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. It continued to do so for over two months, until Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic withdrew his troops from the province. Kosova was placed under the protection of the United Nations, and its inhabitants began to rebuild their lives. Milosevic is now standing trial at The Hague on charges of genocide.
When I first visited Kosova in 1996, the people I met seemed overwhelmed by despair. Five years after the war they remain in despair, and the fate of Kosova is still undecided. The Albanians seek independence; the Serbs want Kosova to remain a part of the last remnant of Yugoslavia, Serbia-Montenegro.
The strength and resilience of the Albanian people are astounding; I want those who view my photographs to experience those qualities. My first travels in the region were strange enough to seem hallucinogenic; this very strangeness has informed and inspired my work since then, giving me an understanding of a different socio-political landscape.
top ^Martha Grenon grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist. She graduated with a degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute in New York, and has worked as a photographer and graphic designer since then.
During the early 1970s she lived within swimming distance of Albania in Corfu, Greece but at that time Albania was closed off from the rest of the world. When she was finally able to visit in 1992 she became determined to photograph the many changes experienced by that country during the transition from communism to democracy. The project was later expanded laterally to include the Albanians of Kosova and Macedonia.
She has received three grants from ArtsLink Collaborative Projects to work in Eastern Europe. Two of these grants were to work with a group of young Kosovars, to whom she gave cameras and film and sent out to record their lives after the war in 1999. The results were seen in exhibits in Austin, Texas, where she has lived for the past 30 years, and Prishtina, Kosova. For more information about these projects, visit the website at http://flashpages.prodigy.net/skilaki/.
She next hopes to publish a book of photographs about the Albanian people.
top ^This website is an internet version of the live exhibit of Martha Grenon's photographic essay "All That Remains: Life, Death and Rebirth - Kosova 1996-2003," which was first shown in Austin, Texas in February 2004. The exhibit began touring in October 2004. The original photographs are larger and archivally printed (on 11" x 14" Ilford Warmtone paper) and matted. Please contact Martha directly to order photographic prints or to schedule this and other related exhibits about the Albanians.
Photography by Martha Grenon.
Site design by Paul Novitski.
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