The photo series titled Concresco by David Galjaard provides a glimpse of an Albanian landscape rarely acknowledged. The country might have been chosen as the No.1 Destination in Lonely Planet’s list of ten top countries to visit for 2011, but it has a sad history of a Stalinist dictatorship that once threatened its people. The Dutch photographer captures one of the last remaining relics from the oppressive rule of Enver Hoxha, over 750,000 abandoned cement bunkers.
Located on every place imaginable from seasides to cemeteries and cliffs, the bunkers captured in the photo series Concresco by David Galjaard are like something straight out of a sci-fi flick. Turned into a book, the series won First PhotoBook Award in this year’s Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards.
Key Themes Behind This Trend
- Abandoned Bunkers
- Exploring opportunities for repurposing abandoned structures in unconventional ways such as housing, co-working spaces or art installations
- Cultural Tourism
- A chance for the country to educate tourists about a dark period in its history, by offering tours and by displaying the bunkers as symbols of a repressive past.
- Architectural Photography
- Opportunities for creatives to capture unique visual stories and perspectives of unconventional structures.
Where This Applies
- Tourism
- Creating new opportunities for cultural tourism by repurposing and displaying historic architectural structures.
- Art
- Creating opportunities for artists to work with and repurpose abandoned structures in meaningful ways.
- Architecture/design
- Opportunities for architects and designers to rethink what abandoned structures could be used for in a contemporary context.
