BEHIND FACADES and GEOMETRIC TREES

Albeit their different choice of subject both series BEHIND FACADES and GEOMETRIC TREES show a cautious approach towards the city of Tirana and its inhabitants as well as a more profound examination of the relation between the Self and the Other.

BEHIND FACADES is not looking at the lively streets of Tirana but is facing towards the calm facades of residential buildings, which the artist is presenting not as hermetically closed surfaces but rather as walls with windows, exteriors with openings. However, the gaze into the inside remains obscured. Instead, several small details tell of the life that is hidden behind the facades. At the same time it becomes quickly apparent that Daliah’s images are taken from the inside of the buildings. Hence, not the Other but ones own viewpoint is beginning and end of her observations.

GEOMETRIC TREES refers to the poem with the same title by Albanian author Anton Papleka, which is grappling with the consequences of adaption and self-denial. This series shows geometrically trimmed box trees, which Daliah was photographing alongside the Lana River. In the centre of her images we find however not the trees but rather their shadows, which in some of the images almost take human shapes. Thus, as in Papleka’s poem, the trees also become metaphors in Daliah’s works. However, unlike Papleka, she seems not to be indignant but rather moved by the cut plants, which calmly and almost gracefully display their defeated nature.

Aviva Kaminer

Photo credits: Daliah Ziper