Photographic representations of urban change in Socialist Albania

International audienceThe four images that I propose come from the magazine Ylli ("The Star"), published every month between 1960 and 1991. It was the main illustrated magazine of Communist Albania, a propaganda magazine and a showcase for Albanian photography. The work of the photographers was therefore constrained and controlled: these photographs, like all those published by the magazine, aimed to express a political "vision". The publication of these images, or their "exhibition", thus makes them visual complements of a great text, that of the transformation of the country under the leadership of the Party, that of the "construction of socialism". As such, all images accompany a written text or are accompanied by a caption: they can be analyzed only in connection with the text. In this case, the point of view they give can in no way be critical of state policy: positive, optimistic images announce the advent of the new city and of the new man who lives in it