The Making of the Collages

After the devastating fire in 2007 that destroyed over 90% of my negatives from Albania, I couldn’t face the remaining material for a long time. The few surviving films were damaged, burnt, stained, warped and too painful to look at.

Only years later, encouraged by my Curator I began scanning the fragments. What started as an act of archiving became a deeply personal and creative process. As I went through the damaged images, I stopped trying to reconstruct the past and began to shape something new from it.

The collages emerged naturally: I brought together people I had photographed in different places and at different times. Once placed side by side, new narratives and relationships developed.

By letting go of the usual rules of photography, I allowed intuition and emotion to guide me. The traces of fire, water, and time were not hidden, they became part of the story.

These collages are not reconstructions of what was lost but transformations: turning destruction into a space for new meaning where memory, time, and personal experience merge.