The portraits presented here, depicting eye witnesses of Albania’s communist dictatorship, were photographed in 2024 in various locations across Albania. My aim was to expand the conventional perspective on political prisoners by making women, children, and families more visible in the public and political sphere. Family members of prisoners were often banished to rural areas through simple administrative procedures and were not recorded by the Sigurimi, but only the “head of the family” (usually male) was registered.. As a result, a significant number of those affected do not even appear in the official statistics.

The inclusion of women and children who were banished to internment camps at a young age or were even born there, as well as young people sentenced to long prison terms, shows that the impact of the communist dictatorship is far deeper and more widespread in Albanian society than one might assume.

The trauma and wounds inflicted on the population by the regime are not merely relics of a distant past, locked away in an isolated box. They are fluid and continue to affect the present.

Making these people visible in public space and providing them with a platform to share their stories is an essential form of acknowledging their suffering, sacrifices, and contributions. Perhaps this may even contribute, in some small way, to the healing of their wounds.

As with many other projects, I did not choose this topic; rather, the topic found me through indirect paths. My photographic work often explores disruptions in biographies caused by political power structures and systemic upheavals.

This portrait series, in the end, is a deeply personal project directly tied to my own biography – even though this connection may not be immediately apparent. The hidden dimension of the exhibition becomes clear only when the link to my biography and the reasons behind my interest in this subject are understood.

How is it that I – a second-generation Korean from Germany – feel compelled to contribute to Albania’s culture of remembrance? The connection lies, in part, in the biography of my parents, especially that of my father.

In 1967, my father’s life as a student in Germany was abruptly interrupted, and his plans for the future were shattered when he was kidnapped by the South Korean secret service and taken to South Korea. As it turned out later, a total of seventeen South Koreans were kidnapped and accused of espionage for North Korea and high treason. The death sentences initially pronounced were commuted to prison terms of several years due to international pressure. My father ultimately spent two years in solitary confinement before being released and returning to Germany.This incident later became known as the “East Berlin Affair.”

While in Germany, my father had made contact with the North Korean Embassy in East Berlin. After several meetings, he was granted the opportunity to travel to North Korea to visit his father who had been held captive there since the Korean War. The intertwined and entangled paths of individuals, shaped by wars and autocratic oppression, extend across generations and national borders, as shown by my parents’ biographies. Moreover, my own biography is undoubtedly shaped by these events – under different circumstances, I would very likely have been born in South Korea, not Germany.

Against this background, in my work as a photographer, I seek the universal essence that connects us all, transcending national borders and generations. The moment a photograph is taken, it becomes part of the past, to which we can travel back, as if with a time machine, by looking at the photo. For me, the greatest fascination of photography lies in its extraordinary ability to stop and preserve time.

When I developed the initial ideas for this project, I had concerns and wondered whether it would not be more appropriate for an Albanian photographer to deal with this topic. Coming to Albania as a foreigner in order to realize a contemporary witness project did not feel “right” at first. But perhaps it sometimes takes precisely an external, multi-dimensional perspective to address such topics.

I feel immense respect and admiration for the eyewitnesses portrayed here – for their lives, their courage not to give up, and their perseverance in moving forward despite all the hardships.

I would like to dedicate this work to them and to all those who have not yet been portrayed and whose stories have not yet been heard.

Dong-Ha Choe