Traveling pictures: Remnants of Albanian mountain culture and their changing perception by different audiences

International audienceWhen I started my research on the Northern Albanian customary law (kanun) in 1992, my camera became a constant companion on my travels in the area. Like a diary, photography served to capture my experiences, to depict people, rituals, everyday life, the environment and material culture. In my first publications I used the photographs to illustrate different aspects of rural culture. Back in Austria, I prepared a slideshow with the pictures I had taken in Northern Albania and presented it to various audiences. In Tirana, too, I had once shown some pictures and a film clip to my host family. In doing so, I realized that the pictures triggered very different reactions in different audiences. The response was highly dependent on whom I showed the images, whether people from Albania, students or teachers in Austria or local people from my home village who wanted to hear about my experiences in Albania. What they all had in common was their curiosity about Albania or parts of the country: regarding Albania, there is often little knowledge and many rumors. In this article I want to elaborate on different audiences' perceptions of the pictures from the Albanian mountains, and the dilemmas I faced when I tried to put the visible phenomena into an analytical context