Concresco

Fearing a foreign attack, Albanian Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha had approximately 750,000 above-ground bunkers built during his reign, from 1945 until his death in 1985. This amounted to one bunker for every four Albanians, in a country the size of Belgium. Although built for protection, this measure had a counterproductive effect and only increased fear among the completely isolated population. After the fall of communism in 1991, the virtually indestructible bunkers lost their unfulfilled purpose and served only as a stark reminder of the nearly 50-year dictatorial past. Today, however, their massive presence seems to impress mostly foreigners. Albanians themselves prefer to look to the future. Their accession to NATO on April 1, 2009, seems to have paved the way for future accession to the EU. Although this is expected to take a considerable time, the population feels they are ready for it. Within this series, the bunkers are used as a visual metaphor to tell a larger social story. They serve as a guide to convey the development of a country that was the last in Europe to renounce communism and has begun its arduous journey to become part of the capitalist West. The bunkers not only tell the absurd story of a xenophobic regime in a totalitarian past. Their varied reuse and the increasing number of bunkers disappearing, also reveal that what was, until recently, Europe's poorest country is slowly but surely undergoing a transformation.