Written With Light
Pjetër Marubi, a political exile from Italy, made what is usually called the first photograph taken in Albania in 1858, a portrait of Hamza bey Kazazi. His studio in Shkodër, Dritëshkronja, "written with the light", passed to Kel and then Gegë Marubi and ran for over a century, leaving an archive of somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 negatives depending on what is being counted. Around it: Kolë Idromeno, painter, photographer and the first Albanian to screen films; Kinostudio "Shqipëria e Re", which made the country's cinema from 1952 to 1992; and Gjon Mili of Korçë, who became one of LIFE's great photographers.
Part of Albania
18 moments in this segment.
- - Pjeter Marubi in his Shkoder studio. Pietro Marubi, known in Albania as Pjeter Marubi, fled Italy and opened a photographic studio in Shkoder in the 1850s. The dynasty he founded went on to record half a million Albanian faces over three generations.
- - Kristo Sulidhi with a child, Marubi studio. A studio sitting from the Marubi workshop in Shkodër in the 1890s. The archive the family built up is the largest photographic record of Albanian society in the late Ottoman period.
- - Kole Idromeno, Courtyard of a Shkodra House. Kole Idromeno's Courtyard of a Shkodra House, painted around 1920. Idromeno was a painter, architect and photographer of Shkoder, and the first Albanian to run a cinema projection in the country.
- - Gegë Marubi. A studio portrait of Gegë Marubi, third and last of the Shkodër dynasty that photographed Albania from 1858 onwards. Trained in Lyon at the Lumière school, he ran the studio until it was nationalised in 1970.
- - Kel Marubi, self-portrait. Kel Marubi photographed himself in the Shkodër studio he inherited from Pjetër Marubi. Three generations of the family recorded northern Albania from the 1850s to the 1950s.
- - The Sadri Keçi family, photographed by Kel Marubi. A family group posed in the Marubi studio in Shkodër. Studio portraits were how ordinary Albanian households entered the photographic record.
- - Përballimi, a Kinostudio feature of 1976. A full-length drama produced in 1976 by Kinostudio 'Shqipëria e Re', the single state film studio in Tirana. Domestic cinema of these years was made entirely inside that institution and under Party supervision.
- - Thirrja, a Kinostudio drama of 1976. A 1976 feature directed by Fehmi Hoshafi for Kinostudio 'Shqipëria e Re'. Prints of these films survive largely because the state archive and private uploaders have kept them in circulation.
- - Streha e re, a drama of 1977. A Kinostudio drama released in 1977, the year Albania's break with China was hardening into total isolation. Its subject, like most of the studio's work, is ordinary life read through the Party's frame.
- - Shoku ynë Tili, an adventure of 1981. A 1981 Kinostudio feature aimed at a young audience. The studio's output ran to about a dozen films a year, all of them passed by the state before release.
- - Nxënësit e klasës sime, school drama of 1984. A 1984 Kinostudio feature built around a classroom and its pupils. Films aimed at the young were a standard vehicle for the values the state wanted taught.
- - Hije që mbeten pas, a drama of 1985. A Kinostudio drama from 1985, directed by Esat Musliu from a script co-written with Diana Çuli. It comes from the last years in which the studio was the country's only source of feature film.
- - Kur Hapen Dyert e Jetes, a feature of 1986. A complete Albanian drama from 1986, made under the state studio system. It is one of the late Kinostudio features that have started circulating again after decades out of sight.
- - Shkëlqim i përkohshëm, a drama of 1988. A Kinostudio drama of 1988, directed by Albert Xholi from a script by Vangjush Saro. It belongs to the studio's final years, two years before the system that funded it fell.
- - Pesha e Kohes, a feature of 1989. A complete Albanian drama made in 1989, in the last years of the state studio Kinostudio Shqiperia e Re. It survives as a record of how late socialist-era cinema was written, shot and acted.
- - The Marubi archive on show in Milan. A short piece from the Marubi National Museum of Photography in Shkodër for 'Marubi archive: the photographic ritual', curated by Zef Paci. The Marubi studio photographed Albanians across three generations from 1856 onward.
- - The Marubi National Museum of Photography, Shkodër. The Shkodër museum that holds the Marubi collection, some half a million negatives covering a century of Albanian life. It opened in its present form in 2016.
- - Inside the Marubi museum. A display of prints and plate cameras in the Marubi museum at Shkodër. Pjetër Marubi opened the first photographic studio in Albania here in the 1850s.
