Exhibition

What creates the portrait of a person? The features by which they are identified. But aren’t those features similar? Aren’t they both identifying and, at the same time, so similar that they confuse us? Thus, we search for uniqueness in every portrait—for a mark, a trait different from the others. And then we learn the names and use them. But aren’t names also similar, or sometimes even the same? What distinguishes one human being from another? It is the life story that begins with birth and continues through childhood, youth, and old age—but aren’t these the same stages of growth for everyone?

Then what is the answer? It is the substance that fills a life, that makes one person distinct from another—the different stories that are created. When many of them resemble and converge in time and place, in causes and consequences, they become generational histories. That is where one begins to look for the details that characterize these stories, not so much to highlight differences, but to reveal the oppressive structure of the dictatorship. A mark of violence on the forehead, damaged senses and limbs, minds struggling to recall every detail, souls waiting for an apology, lives that deserve remembrance and gratitude for their resilience and exhausting survival, a desire to let the whole world know the totalitarianism they endured in spirit and body, testimonies of truth that were long kept captive under the heavy lid of propaganda and persecution—whose weight is still felt today. It is a long narrative in 44 portraits, drawn from 44 testimonies given by former political prisoners of the Spaç prison-camp and their relatives to the AIDSSH. A long journey of recordings in Tirana and other cities, where they live after regaining freedom with the arrival of democracy. These are portraits of courage and resistance that must be known, that must be learned, as a mission to ensure the past is never forgotten. This is the purpose of the archive of testimonies, and this is the message that photographer Dorian Zanali conveys through the 44 portraits he created after long hours of listening to testimonies. 

A portrait is a relationship or a dialogue between the artist and the subject; it is a way of telling a story in the name of the future, through physical and spiritual features. A portrait like these is also an artistic form for expressing the powerful messages of the subject and the artist, provoking reflection on human rights and freedom.

Written by: Rovena Rrozhani