Family Photographs in Communist Albania: State Photography and the Private Sphere

Gilles de Rapper (1) , Anouck Durand (1)

1 IDEMEC - Institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative

The aim of this paper is to present the first results of an on-going research project on the social uses of photography in communist Albania. If we are interested in official and propaganda photography, we would like to focus here on a less known aspect of photography in Albania, family photography. Social sciences have long been interested in the relationship between family and photography and it is established that photography tells a lot about family forms and kinship relations. Family albums are narratives; they tell the story of the family and produce an image of the family. We would like to question this image in the context of communist Albania, in which both photography and family were subject to political representations and practices.

Mots clés: Albania; Photography; Socialism

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Art et histoire de l'art; Histoire

Gilles de Rapper, Anouck Durand. Family Photographs in Communist Albania: State Photography and the Private Sphere. Eckehard Pistrick, Nicola Scaldaferri and Gretel Schwörer. Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.210-229, 2011. ⟨halshs-00596257⟩