LONGING FOR A CHANGE

~ An Nguyen

With hundreds of thousands of people having left Albania in the last decade, an exodus that left many people, mostly elderly, behind – the Balkan country has faced many struggles in developing economically and culturally. My series was an opportunity for me to first understand, and then to examine the current condition of the country through human beings and locations that I encountered, the things that have been relentlessly keeping Albania alive.

I remember being offered fruits by everyone that I had a chance to meet. I and two other friends followed a villager to his village to take photos of him. Without knowing a single word of his language and he not knowing English, the villager trusted us enough to bring us into his home. We were welcomed by him and his wife, who brought us a huge table of food, talked to us in body language and hugged my head as I tried to communicate. We left with backpacks filled with nuts and pomegranates. The genuine hospitality that I experienced in Albania felt very close to my heart, as it made me miss the villagers in my grandparents’ hometown in Vietnam. It definitely gave me this homesickness, but also an immeasurable joy of feeling once again connected to complete strangers.

@annguyenphoto