Besa Luci in conversation with Bertan Selim and Majlinda Hoxha. 

In this episode, we discuss photography’s storytelling role, capacity to distill complex human realities in a single image, ethical questions faced by photographers and the opportunities and barriers faced by young aspiring artists. 

Photography is a powerful visual storytelling medium, be it in documentary form or in a more conceptual approach. Photography documents society around us, inviting and often provoking us to notice and pay attention to perspectives and experiences that otherwise may go unseen. 

Storytelling through photography opens access to other forms of political and social engagement, observation and reaction. Photography-based projects often allow space and time for a different type of sensibility and exploration, whether the work is driven by an intrinsically personal enquiry and memory or the aspiration to question or understand the impact of larger societal transformations on people’s everyday surroundings. 

Across the region, artistic and professional photography work is expanding and flourishing. Yet young and emerging photographers are often faced with limited educational, professional and financial opportunities.  

Two guests join us to discuss the power and influence of visual storytelling, as well as the type of work driving young photographers in the region today.

Bertan Selim is founder and executive director of VID Foundation for Photography, an Amsterdam-based Foundation that supports emerging visual storytellers from the Balkans with grants and mentorships. In 2014 he helped set up the Arab Documentary Photography Programme (ADPP), a joint collaboration of the Prince Claus Fund, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture and Magnum Foundation. He regularly curates photo shows and lectures at different art academies throughout Europe.

Majlinda Hoxha is a photography editor at K2.0. Majlinda received her Masters of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Art at Auckland University, New Zealand in 2008. Her photography draws on a language of fragmentation and displacement and is sensitive to the recent political and social upheaval of Kosovo.

Other Talking Points is produced by Besa Luci and Aulonë Kadriu.

Music and sound mix by PUG musik.

This podcast is part of the Human Rightivism project, which is funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Prishtina, implemented by the Community Development Fund through its Human Rightivism Program. The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Embassy of Sweden in Prishtina.