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Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Photographer
Giovanni Cobianchi
VETEM
Gomma Photography Grant 2021 Finalists

Gomma Photography Grant 2021

VETEM

Photographer

Giovanni Cobianchi

VETEM

30 Jan, 2022

This reportage is made of photos taken from 2007 through to 2015. The photos were taken between the city of Shkoder and the mountains of north Albania, more precisely the Shala Valley, in the Dukahjin highlands. The story I'm telling is the result of the many years passed with the community of farmers in the north, where I spent time learning the language and sharing the day to day realities of rural life. My intention is to tell a story about the change of identity that these communities have experienced during that period. I witnessed an internal migration that saw people descend from the mountains to populate the outskirts of Shkoder. The phenomenon I witnessed however, was a migration of identity, an upheaval of the customs and traditions of farmers who, changing place, found themselves dealing with a form of life alien to them, transforming them into real lost souls. VETEM is a reportage of a cultural exodus and shows a version of Albania that has almost ceased to exist.

About the photographer

Giovanni Cobianchi

2005, degree in History of Art with thesis about the exchanged between photographer and photographed 2008-2012, photographer for a press agency in Verona, my City Town. In the winter of 2008-2009 I traveled by hitchhiking from Verona up to Iran to tell an ancient ceremony celebrated in the Iranian mountains and exhibited in 2011 at the first edition of the Cortona On The Move, Circuit OFF. Between 2012 and 2013, after working more than a year in a reception center for migrants I realized JEREVIENs project, which ended with the publication of a book. The story of a journey that took me from Verona to Lampedusa with stops in Libya, Tunisia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali. Retracing the contrary of migrants en route to collect personal life stories. 2013 published a photographic book “Jereviens”. www.jerevien.wordpress.com 2008-2015 I have dedicated myself to a long-term project in northern Albania edited in this last year (2017). The project was selected this September 2017 among the finalists of the Festival of Ethic Photography in Lodi, Italy. Among 2018-2020 I spent these two years living in a village in the Bolivian Amazon where I finally edited a book about my eight years of traveling in Albania and which I am now about to publishing. I am currently working on editing several personal photographic projects.