“Oh, we’re back in the Balkans again, back to the joy and the pain. What if it burns or it blows or it snows? We’re back to the Balkans again. Back, where tomorrow the quick may be dead, With a hole in his heart or a ball in his head. Back, where the passions are rapid and red, Oh, we’re back to the Balkans again!”

Song of the Balkan Peninsula, Edith Durham, 1908

In the 1970’s, along with half of my generation, I believed that socialism was the way forward and made photographic journeys to the USSR, Cuba, East Germany and Romania. Strangely the country that exerted the strangest charm for me, without my having visited it, was Albania. Tales of a closed country, following an isolated Stalinist path of socialism, then turning its back on the Eastern bloc and embracing Maoism, was always fuelling my imagination. The hum and whistle of Radio Tirana with its flat monotonal commentary and its mix of martial and folk music triggered visions of a secret land behind mist-covered mountains. The excesses of the capitalist world vision epitomized by “Voice of America” had lost any allure for me, and a secretive country which banned beards, pornography, Americans, and idolised Norman Wisdom cried out to be visited.

In 1990 I joined a group of twelve people, made up of spies, tourists, journalists, a retired farmer, a botanist and a rock musician, on an “archaeological study tour”. Between us we had about four words of Albanian, a 1960’s phrase book and a lot of fear, especially as the timing of the visit followed hard on the heels of the fall of the Berlin wall and fighting had just started in Kosova. We were taken from co-op to commune, listened to traditional folk singers and as a grand finale visited the Enver Hoxha state tractor factory (devoid of tractors). Between the lines, however, we could see a country in its death throes. People whispered at night of demonstrations and unrest, asking endless questions about the West and… Norman Wisdom.

We were one of a few groups to visit Shkodra and made a limited trip to the north where, in the inaccessible mountains, a way of life had resisted forty years of repression. Here in these isolated heights, village and tribal life was based on the Kanun, a rigid set of codes from medieval times, based on honour and blood. My interest was whetted, fed by fantasy and reading Edith Durham’s accounts of living with the “Mountaineers” in her book, ‘High Albania’.

President Hoxha died in 1985 and in a wave of riots signalling the end of the one-party state, his statue was toppled on 21st February, 1991. I returned to the country with the writer Ian Thompson in March as the mountain snows melted and access to the northern mountains became possible. The area had been closed to foreigners for forty years as Hoxha’s party control had encountered real problems with the fiercely independent population of the region. The journey, this time, was better organised. It needed to be. The country was in a state of anarchy and navigating our way on the difficult roads, anger and crime were a constant reminder of life as it had been. We were lucky to be some of the first Westerners to meet the generous people of the highlands who took us into their homes and fed us despite severe shortages. People followed their law “Our house belongs to God and guest” and we were always under the host’s protection and given both food and gracious company. When we came upon the mournful funeral of a young man in the village of Kalimash, way up in the mountains, not only did they let a stranger photograph a painful and deeply personal ritual, but we were taken to the father’s house where gifts of food were thrust on us, with the words: “We are so sorry. It is our custom to place a roasted sheep on the table in front of guests. But we don’t have the means anymore.”

Europe was changing at an unprecedented pace, through technology and the free flow of people, this corner of the Balkans was moving from a closed society, full of dark secrets and fierce bravery on it’s difficult and journey towards a new beginning.

I hope this work honours these people!

BARRY LEWIS

Barry Lewis started as a chemistry teacher with photography as a hobby. Barry stopped teaching in 1974 when he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art where he studied under Bill Brandt. In 1976 he won the Vogue award and worked for a year with the magazine. In 1977 he received an arts council grant to photograph commuting in London, which was exhibited in the Museum of London and the Southbank. In 1981 & 83 he was exhibited in the Photographers Gallery, for ‘New Work on Britain’ and a solo show, ‘A Week in Moscow’ Working mainly for magazines, in 1999 he was a co-founder of the photo agency Network which played an important role in British Photojournalism for over 20 years. A regular contributor to Life Magazine, National Geographic, and the Sunday Times, Barry has worked globally until 2014 and made over 20 books. He has exhibited throughout the world and received several awards including the Leica medal for humanitarian photography. From 2015 for 5 years Barry worked mainly on documentary films but has returned to photography in 2021 when he started his current work, “Intersections”: a study of London through portraits and words of the people.