Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the inauguration of the Museum of Photography Marubi in Shkoder:
A long journey, dangerous to the brink of existence, of a treasure that was tragically ignored for decades, is concluded here tonight. A journey that began on the shores of Italy 160 years ago when a mysterious man named Pietro Marubi climbed the ladder of the ferryboat to cross the Adriatic and immigrate to the opposite coast, here in Shkodra, where he appeared in the life of this city as the “strange gentleman” with a three-leg black box on his back. He would go every day with that box on his back to a workshop that was given the unusual name “Dritëshkronja” (The Light-Letter).
There is no information that “signor Pietro”, the immigrant from Italy, a revolutionary member of the Carbonari society, who left his country due to persecution, was given a hard time to be provided with regular documents here in our country and become “zoti Pjetër” (Ms Pjetër), the first of a dynasty of light-belletrists from Shkoder who collected in the three-leg black box the treasure of the visual memory of the Albanian times where they lived in.
Likewise, nobody can tell what made signor Pietro become Mr Pjetër in a country from where Italy has been always looked at with awe, and where Italians have always been welcomed as close relatives. What we know though, is that the virtuous Kel Marubi is not Pjetër Marubi’s son related to him by blood, but he is Pjetër Marubi’s son related to him by light.
Ismail Kadare says that it was quite a rare case when the owner of an enterprise took the name of the enterprise instead of giving the enterprise his own name. The biological father of Kel’s was a mountain man named Rrok Kodheli, who came down to Shkoder and took his son Mati to Mr Pjetër’s workshop. But Mati died from a serious illness at 19, and Rrok insisted that his dead son was replaced by Mikel, his other son who was 15.
And Mikel became later the famous Kel Marubi, the one who sent Gegë, one of his 5 sons, to France at the age of 17. How do you think he managed to send his son to France? Thanks to his friendship with the Lumière Brothers. Gegë was the first foreign student to be enrolled in the first school of photography in the world, the Lumirère Brothers’ school in Paris.
Gegë came back with much more technological knowledge than his father who stayed here, and it was actually Gegë who made the eye of the camera look beyond the poses or those posing, at the landscapes and the surrounding nature.
In 1937 Ahmet Zog invited Gegë, along with a group of photographers, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Independence. Gegë was the first Albanian photographer to be awarded a Certificate of Commendation at the “Fiera del Levante” fair, and later a gold medal at the Thessaloniki Fair. Earlier that year, when he went to Tirana invited by King Zog, he opened the first solo photography exhibition in the history of our country.
The famous studio became property of the state in 1949, and that same year Angjelin Neshati, who along with Gegë Marubi, Shan Pici, Dedë Jakova and Pjetër Rraboshta formed the group of the 5 celebrities of Shkoder, took a remarkable picture of his colleagues, a picture that is the ultimate capture of Gegë Marubi who shut off his camera and photographed never more.
In 1970 Gegë handed the fund over to the party, and died in 1984. A few days before he died, he entrusted with one friend of his a part of the collection that until then was hidden and unknown to anybody, and which he managed to hide even from the party. The nudes! The nudes taken here in Shkoder between 1927 and 1940.
This is the story in brief. But what is worth looking for beyond the chronology of events, is the answer to the question: Why did Pietro Marubi come to Shkoder, and why the saga of the Marubis could not have any other stage and any other background but the city of Shkoder on this side of the Adriatic?
Shkoder was the first economic metropolis of a still deeply Ottoman Albania. Shkoder was a courageous city of traders, who back then had trade relations with Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, with Venice and Trieste, and the market of Shkoder was known as a famous market. Shkoder was an intense geopolitical space, and home to important consulates. Back then, when Pietro Marubi came here, ambassadors Vlahutin and Donald Lu would have held in this city their intense activity from one consulate to another, and from one party to another.
Shkoder was the perfect habitat amid waters and the surrounding mountain areas. Shkoder was the most fertile meeting place between cultures and different expressions of faith in Albania. But Shkoder was also a venue of apprenticeship and education, and we must remember that it was the oldest city along with Durres. And ultimately, Shkoder was what Migjeni called her “a lover forever and ever”.
But there is also another question. How come that the black box that collected tirelessly the faces of the people in this space, was not burnt down by the fanatics along with Pjetër Marubi and his sons related to him by light? For we must not forget that back then Shkoder was part of an empire where the image, the reproduction of the human image was considered a sin. Actually, not only there was nobody who raised a hand against the sin of the Marubis on behalf of morality, but the people of Shkoder fell in love with the Marubis and with their art. Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Bektashi, men and women from the wealthiest to the poorest, citizens that had been living in the heart of Shkoder for centuries, or mountain women above and under Shkoder, craftsmen and farmers, people celebrating or mourning, men in war and in a feud, stunningly beautiful ladies whose looks seemed to belong to another world, all of them entered alternately through the eye of the black box this extraordinary archive of the visual memory.
Therefore, imagine how much we would know now how those people were, how they looked like, how they postured, how they dressed, if this dynasty did not exist. And it is impossible to not be in an awe if we think that 160 years ago, at an extraordinary contemporaneity across Europe, the archive of the visual memory started to being created here in this country through the trails of light on a glass plate. Exactly at the same time, synchronously when it was happening in Paris or elsewhere in Europe, and exactly at the very birth of photography.
Among the approximately 500 thousand photographic negatives that we have inherited, we can see today the portraits of the forerunners, we can see who the dignitaries were, and we can count the troops of the fighters for freedom waving the national flag for the first time. Through the same negatives, we can also see the constitutional documents of our state. The faces, the clothes, the attitudes of travellers coming from afar. Beyond the landscapes, the scenes of celebrations, the urban life, there is something even stronger precisely because it is perhaps more fragile and more human, and totally in contrast to that time. The interiors, the ceremonies, the family poses, the attendance of everybody in front of the black box with such a candour, an almost stunning naivety, like an immense theatre stage where everybody, ranging from the most renowned men to the children, all have the same look. All of them look like children in front of the camera. There are also women and misty-eyed young ladies with unlit cigarettes as if they wanted to convey a message, with an eroticism unveiled to an extent that everybody can see but nobody can tell.
It is impossible to see what the Marubis collected in their box, and not wonder: “How did we use to be?” For, contrary to what we have been told that we were, we actually discover that we were Europeans, with the same desires, with the same passions, with the same marching bands, with the same bicycles and clothes, with the same grace that we would be contemplating marvelled at the photographs that the far Westerns took at that same time, with the same vagaries of fashion, of refinement, with the hats and curls, with the subtleties and seductions, with the intimacies and with the emotional life of a whole different Albania. Of a different Albania that was truly human, that was enclosed in the black box and remained unaffected by any ideological retouching.
And in fact, the world that the Marubis and their students from Shkoder have left us is like an ideal database where we can do any kind of research and embark on any kind of journey to Albania “as it was”, without being taken by the hand by historians who tell their own truth, or without being in the awkward position of seeing our own country through the eyes of foreigners.
The Marubis have deservedly been considered by someone as genius statisticians of that era. And actually the Marubis were everything that communism was not. And communism was everything that the Marubis could not be. Kadare has said more or less that the eye of their camera was closed when the panorama of communism began to appear, just like human eyes close in order not to see a tragedy. And we, as descendants of Mr Pjetër, not of signor Pietro, are all witnesses of the famous photography of Kel Marubi with Enver Hoxha on the balcony, both of the original photography where Enver Hoxha is on the balcony with some friends, and of the one photography retouched by the party where Enver Hoxha is alone, and instead of his friends there is the wall.
How could the Marubi dynasty continue in front of the eraser of the retouching that erased memory? The Marubis came back in the 90s but they came back in a quite a strange manner, while the treasure continued its dangerous journey towards degradation, threated to be destroyed. They returned amid sporadic publications, they returned also in public environments. I remember that when I became minister of culture I put some photographs by the Marubis, enlarged manifold, in the premises of the Ministry of Culture, and the effect was the same mentioned in the renowned “Autobiography” by the great photographer Man Ray, when he describes his first meeting with the famous art personality of the 20s, Gertrude Stein. “Miss Stein and Alice Toklas sat on couches covered with fabric that mingled with their dresses. The massive Italian and Spanish lacquered furniture was all over the room, and on it there were porcelain bric-à-brac or vases with wildflowers. A large cross separated two rows of windows above which paintings by Cézanne, Matisse, Pratt and Picasso were hanging on a plain-painted wall. At first glance, it seemed that these paintings befitted very little the decadent decor below them.” Surely Gertrude Stein wanted to prove that the coexistence between the two elements was possible. These revolutionary paintings, let’s say, did not befit very badly the junk around. These did not befit very badly every environment where the revolutionary paintings of the Marubis photographs were displayed spontaneously. They were revolutionary and have remained revolutionary because they exist beyond every ideological curtain, beyond every curtain that different schools have put, put or will put in front of our eyes, while teaching us how to see the world or understand photography.
Finally, here we are after we made a thorough inventory in a warehouse of approximately 500 thousand negatives, not to mention the several objects, documents, records, telegrams, cameras, fantastic evidence of the history of photography in our country. We have digitized more than 100 thousand photographs.
Before we had the real museum, we started with the virtual museum, an online museum as a space with no boundaries to give a chance to all our fellow citizens to have a look at this unknown marvel.
The edifice had turned into an empty building, burnt down, locked with a big rusted padlock, and the yard covered in thorn bushes. As it often happens, part of the yard was “an occupied plot” in the very heart of Shkoder and under the nose of everybody, in a building that the state had purchased.
We promised that we would be back once we had built a house worthy to host this treasure, which otherwise would have continued to agonize, and which is now safe thanks to a bunch of people. The names of these people may never be known, but they are as much important as all the characters that populated the world of the Marubis, for they are from this city, women, men, boys and girls who, although they didn’t have any support and any real opportunity, kept this treasure safe from humidity, dust and destruction.
But this is also a joint work, a synergy of efforts among many partners. The minister mentioned one of the partners, I would add the European Union which became, through the IPA funds and the Albanian Development Fund, the main contributor to this endeavour, and I would add also the Swiss government, the UNDP. Let me underline though that all these joint efforts would have not had any results without that bunch of people who carried this treasure in their hearts and arms, body and soul, and brought it here by overcoming many sacrifices and hurdles.
The Marubis were pioneers, they had a vocation to be the first. I hope very much that their museum also will be the first of a new generation of museums. We will inaugurate very soon the Museum of Medieval Art in Korca, another treasure like that of the Marubis’ that was abandoned and left adrift. We have regained control of this other treasure, and will exhibit it in the best European conditions. The museum of archaeology that we reopened in Durres is an example.
We will take forward many other ideas, always wishing that we won’t be embarrassed in the eyes of those for whom museums are being built. Not in the eyes of those who will visit them, but in the eyes of those who are the very reason of these museums. I believe that today Mr Pjetër, his son Kel Marubi related to him by light, and Gegë, the last one of the dynasty who departed from this world grieving for the lost treasure, will finally rest in peace. Here, in the very heart of Shkoder, the treasure is finally safe and open to all the generations of this city and of this country, and to all of them coming from afar who will see here that the Albania of Europeans, of Muslims and of Christians, the European Albania of the fighters of the past and of the students of today is not utopia, but it is a reality that we need only to transfer from the photograph to the daily life of our country.
Many thanks.
