Drini i Zi

From the confluence of the Black and White Drin, the river flows as an artery through Albania’s changing soul. Along its banks lie the scars of a paranoid past—173,371 concrete bunkers and submerged villages drowned beneath Lake Fierza. Built under Enver Hoxha’s regime, heavy dams reshaping the landscape mirror a history written in labor camps and state control. In a country where private photography was once forbidden, a visual void hangs over family memories and drowned histories.

Moving between documentary and intimate fiction, the images capture a territory suspended between two worlds. Ancient social codes of honour and majestic isolation meet communist vestiges and modern transformation. Absurd totems, architectural monuments, and rooted bodies bear witness to a regime that shaped both land and mind. Like the rising waters of the reservoirs, time flows over what was erased, keeping the presence of the past alive. The river becomes a metaphor for relentless movement against a people fiercely anchored to their ground—a journey through memory, isolation, and life and death along the Drin.