Photography and remembrance. Questioning the visual legacy of communism and its reception in contemporary Albania

International audienceThe link between photography and memory is generally acknowledged: photography establishes a special relationship between the viewers and the past; it contributes to the formation and transmission of memory, and the viewing of photographs generally incites viewers to speak about the past and their experience of it, hence the relation between photography and nostalgia. My paper is based on the assumption that recollections of communism are largely mediated by photographs of that era, among other visual productions. The communist period in Albanian saw the production of a considerable amount of photographs. A large part of them still exist, both in public and private collections. The relation between photography and memory is made even more challenging given the conditions of production of most of these photographs, between state control and personal appropriation. The aim is thus to question the link between particular sets of photographs produced within the specific conditions of dictatorship, and their reception today, in order to explain the role of photography in remembering communism.This paper is based on observations and interviews conducted during a long-term survey on the production and uses of photographs in communist Albania. I discuss contemporary practices and ideas related to photographs of the communist period, both public and private, in order to question the visual dimension of remembrance of communism. I explore two specific photographic genres, press photography and family photography, and ask how their meaning and value have evolved, from the time of production to present days, and how they change according to the agents involved in their production and reception. I thus consider photographs not only as images but also as material objects embedded in mnemonic practices. My aim is to establish the relevance of the ethnography of photography – which seeks to understand and explain the relations between people and photographs – in exploring the recollections of communism