Paranoid Dictator’s Communist-Era Bunkers Now a National Nuisance

• From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series Concresco
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  From the series When the Siren Goes
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  From the series When the Siren Goes
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  From the series When the Siren Goes
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  From the series When the Siren Goes
• 
  From the series When the Siren Goes
• 
  From the series When the Siren Goes
• 
  From the series When the Siren Goes

In Albania, 750,000 Communist-era bunkers populate the landscape, relics of the paranoia and skewed priorities of former dictator Enver Hoxha. Now they exist as quirky homes, animal shelters, ad hoc storage and make-out spots. The peculiar program of bunkerization, which lasted Hoxha’s entire 40-year rule, resulted in one bunker for every four citizens.

 

In November of last year, Dutch photographerDavid Galjaard won the 2012 Aperture Foundation/Paris Photo First Photobook Award forConcresco, a book that surveys the scattered and now repurposed or deteriorating concrete blobs. As much as the bunkers have intrigued historians, Galjaard laments how little the general public knows about Albania.

 

“Everyone knows about Stalin but nobody knows Hoxha,” says Galjaard. “It’s a secret history, probably because Albania is so small. You can see Concresco as an introduction to a country that only a few people know.”

The bunkers’ abandonment, reuse and reimagining for Galjaard reflects the changing politics, lifestyles and aspirations in the former Eastern Bloc nation.

“I’m telling a story about a country and I’m using bunkers as metaphors,” says Galjaard. “Albania is an Eastern country but it wants to be part of the West. It has one foot in each, and the split is sort of unnatural. Albanians still have not found their identity so they struggle with the past, but also struggle with the future. And future for them is being part of Western Europe.”

The Communist leader Hoxha rose to power in 1944 as leader of the Party of Labour of Albania and ruled until his death in 1985. Hoxha was on constant alert for political threats and maintained his position with routine immobilization, imprisonment and eviction of his people and political opponents. Hoxha’s suspicions also extended beyond Albanian borders and the bunkers, which number 24 to every square kilometer, and were built in preparation for a multi-front war Hoxha expected from invading countries, East and West. Every citizen in Hoxha’s plan was a reservist. Twelve-year-olds were trained to fire rifles. The bunkers never saw action.

Today, Albanian authorities are at a loss for what to do. The reinforced concrete domes are as difficult to repurpose as they are to destroy. Tourists are fascinated by the bunkers strewn like confetti across scenery, but for locals they’re a largely uninteresting, if obstructive, part of the landscape.”

Construction costs were a huge drain on the small Balkan nation’s resources and diverted efforts away from improving roads or solving Albania’s chronic shortage of housing. The bunkerization program began in 1967 and ceased soon after Hoxha’s death in 1985.

Today, Albania is extremely pro-West, particularly pro-American. In 2011, the prime minister erected astatue of George W. Bush in the town of Fushë-Krujë.

“I think Albanians are the biggest fans of America worldwide,” says Galjaard. “They name bars after Bush. You see a lot of Albanian flags, but you also see a lot of American flags. More than European flags. People would ask me if I was American, hoping I was.”

Galjaard visited Albania three times over an 18-month period, spending a total of four moths in the country. The project is a thorough but open-ended look at the country and its people.

“Concresco is not Albania, it is my vision of Albania,” says Galjaard of the book which includes personal essays by two writers Slavenka Drakulic and Jaap Scholten. “It is built of opinions. Then you have interviews with the Albanian people also. Sometimes the opinions contradict.”

Galjaard is not the first photographer to focus on Albania’s bunkers. Alicja Dobrucka has a similar project. What distinguishes Galjaard’s work was his decision to present the project primarily as a book. Galjaard raised money with help from arts organizations, some crowd funding, support from the Dutch embassy in Tirana, and not a small amount of his own savings — about 12,000 Euros, he says.

The investment was worth it. All 750 copies have sold and Concresco is now a rare object. Perhaps the book benefitted from the renaissance enjoyed by self-published and small-run photobooks in general, but Galjaard insists that not all bodies of work, however great, necessarily work or find validation in book form.

“I don’t want to make books for the sake of it, I want to make books because a series needs a book. Otherwise, I don’t know if it is worth all the hassle and also the competition because there are so many people making books these days.”