Elton Gllava, BULQIZË, 2019

“Bulqizë” narrates the life of a small town in the north-east of Albania, known as the city of miners. After the discovery of chrome in 1939 and the opening of the first mines in 1948, the city became the third largest producer of this mineral in the world. I went to Bulqizë for the first time in 2013. The first impact took me back in time. The gray buildings that faced the main street outlined a city that had stopped in time, crystallized in the atmosphere of Albania of my childhood. Through this I tell the story of a community that sits on a “golden mountain”, but sees its resources vanish incessantly.
Bulqizë has been defined by some as a social ghetto. For me it represents a repertoire of cultural archetypes that I tried to capture. “ – Elton Gllava,