© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

Hello Filippo, firstly, where did you grow up?

Filippo Bardazzi (FB): Prato is the city where I was born and raised. A town in the north of Tuscany with about 200 thousand people, a "provincial" reality in all respects. Despite this, the environment in which I trained has always been dynamic and rich in talent. In its inhabitants, in their eyes, in their arms, the desire to emerge is strongly expressed. It's a need for self-realization that we don't normally encounter in towns and communities of this size. Prato was born as an industrial city, specifically textile. Still, over time, it is transforming itself into a place that produces art, creates culture, and somehow keeps pace with the Italian metropolises in terms of dynamism. The change has been evident to me over the past, say, 25 years.

When did you approach photography? How would you define your approach today?

FB: I first encountered photography around 12, when I started using my father's Minolta SLR on family trips. I was completely unaware and more tied to the wonder of the final result than to any technical interest. Around 2005, with my first digital camera purchase, I started as a self-taught to deepen what lies behind this "magic," both from a historical point of view and from a more exquisitely practical one. However, the decision that this activity would become my profession comes with the return, this time conscious and convinced, to analog photography, with my first darkroom and the purchase of film cameras suitable for my needs (medium and large format ).

I don't think I can define my practice once and for all. At least not yet. I can bring to it some adjectives that I feel belong to me and my working method: insatiable (both in research and in results), direct, and respectful of others and their stories. I have always been interested in changes in the landscape and its inhabitants, especially past and present.

The personal works, both the individual ones and those made collectively with my colleague Laura Chiaroni, are preceded by a long planning and research phase (photographic, literary, technical). Often, it happens to have to study a route and write down a map that will help document the environments useful for the project. When the work is “four-handed,” the dialectic accompanying each phase also becomes very important, from shooting to editing and proposal. With film, then you need to spend several days developing and scanning the negatives. For this reason, my personal works need a relatively long time to be completed.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

Tell us about the project 'Bunkers' that won Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020?

FB: 'Bunkers' started almost by chance during the summer of 2018 when I became aware of these fortifications that scatter the Albanian landscape for the first time, thanks to two friends who have just returned from their holidays spent in the Balkan country. It immediately seemed like a story to tell. To do this, I was sure to use a large format and, for the first time, on black and white (I made all images with a Linhof Master Technika and with Foma films, one of the very few companies born in Eastern Europe still on the market.). The work for the moment focuses on two areas of Albania: the coastal one and the southern one. I had scheduled a third trip to the country in the spring of 2020, then the pandemic broke out, and I had to postpone my departure.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

What difficulties did you encounter in the historical reconstruction of the survey/campaign?

FB: Pre-departure research focused in particular on the country's history on the one hand and brutalist and socialist architecture on the other. It is incredible how, despite its proximity to Italy, Albania is a mystery from many points of view, starting from the historical one. It is undoubtedly due to the oblivion to which the Albanian people have been forced for almost 50 years by a illiberal and isolationist dictatorship perpetrated by Enver Hoxha. Our lack of knowledge of this country is reflected in the gigantic, unconditional, and lasting admiration that the Albanian people show towards Italy and its inhabitants. It's a relationship born during the years of the dictatorship when the Italian TV and radio channels were the only access to Western Europe. These were captured more or less clandestinely in the 70s / 80s as confirmed by thousands of Albanians that landed in the coasts of Puglia in the mid-90s. It is a consideration you feel everywhere, which has made my documentation and my historical reconstruction less complex than expected.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

Did you meet experts on this trip? Who did you talk to in your research?

FB: The contacts with experts for the realization of the project took place entirely in Italy. They helped me better contextualize the role of these defensive architectures for the history and geography of the Balkan country. In particular, I discovered that no one knows the actual number of bunkers in Albania, although some estimates even go so far as to hypothesize that they can exceed 750,000 units. Their construction happened between 1967 and 1986 and followed a standard engineering scheme conceived by Josif Zagali, an architect with a particular career and paradigmatic of the parable of terror of the communist regime itself. Zagali was first a partisan during the Second World War, then trusted adviser to the dictator, from whom he ended up being purged and locked up in a labor camp for alleged espionage charges. Now close to death, he regretted having contributed to the construction of the bunkers and joining the regime. However, the most absurd aspect of this story is that during the long rule of Xoxha none of the bunkers were ever used for military purposes nor defense against an enemy invasion.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

'Bunkers' is a vivid testimony, a warning about nationalism and authoritarian regimes. Photography as a documentary register and historicized value. What moods, points of view, memories did you encounter?

FB: During my two travels, I met people who, in general, want to move on from their history. Among the Eastern European countries that I visited for photographic reasons, Albania is the only place where the nostalgia for the twentieth-century socialist regimes is marginal. There is hardly any celebration of Enver Hoxha, the dictator who led the country from 1944 to 1985. Especially in the cities, the population strongly embraces Western ideals, and this allows local and government administrations to push on the accelerator of modernization and unbridled liberalism, with sometimes aberrant consequences in terms of social disparities and corruption, as well as from an architectural and cultural point of view. The desire to erase the past is so strong that, for example, they decided to demolish the rationalist-style building that housed the National Theater in Tirana, with the excuse of structural problems and the old Qemal Stafa stadium. These removals of the past (and others related to brutalist architecture) have impressed me and prompted me to focus my attention on the bunkers. So far, they were saved from this "iconoclastic fury" and their complete removal. Maybe because of their solid and reinforced concrete structure and omnipresence. Some are converted into other destinations and functions, also for more contemporary civil purposes.

From a narrative point of view, what are the criteria and choices he followed in editing? How did you select "your bunkers"? Can you tell us about this diverse taxonomy of new destinations?

FB: 'Bunkers' is a project that I still do not consider fully completed. In this phase of the proposal and "provisional" restitution, I tried to show the different landscape and conservation contexts in which it is possible to find these structures within the country today. The editing followed a balance between urban and peripheral environments. At the same time, for the series presented at Urbanautica, I also wanted to include some of the most curious recoveries of the bunkers for civil purposes that I encountered during my travels: this is the case, for example, of the restaurant under construction on the beach, of the underground warehouse for conservation, of the fish or finally of the grave in the cemetery of Tirana.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

Each project is also a learning process. What did you learn from this photographic investigation?

FB: First of all, Bunkers' creation helped me become more familiar with a slow and reflective photographic medium - the large format - in contexts of difficult pressure. The job's complexity was to travel far and wide in a foreign country with heavy and bulky equipment, with limited time available, and without the ability to develop films directly on site. It was a sort of "stress test": encountering and solving difficulties to be at ease in future situations of any kind. The project then allowed me to learn more about the history of a very close country, of which we still know very little.

I first thought about this project with a view to a final presentation in an exhibition. If the work attracted a publisher's interest or a photographic reality, I would also evaluate the creation of a book. I want to make this reality known outside the Albanian borders, where the bunkers are well known, given their constant presence in the territory.

© FilippoBardazzi from the series 'Bunkers'

Today there is a lot of buzz about photography. As for your works, what are the difficulties you encounter in telling and disseminating your work?

FB: More than about photography, I would rather say, unfortunately, around photography. More and more often, in the documentary field, it happens that the contents succumb to the form or, even worse, to the ability of each professional to weave relationships or to propose their work. On the other hand, generalist publishing, also due to the sector's crisis, often chases sensationalism in the choice of projects and individual images. And this ends up going to the detriment of correct and truthful information. For authors who work in this field, it is necessary to search for those "happy islands" of photography where the proposal of themes linked to a lesser extent to current events and long-term projects is still possible and indeed strongly encouraged.

Please indicate three books that are significant in relation to the reading of the project.

FB: Ismail Kadaré, 'The Pyramid', Longanesi, 1992
Frédéric Chaubin, 'CCCP. Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed', Taschen, 2011
Joel Sternfeld, 'On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam', Steidl, 2012

LINK

Filippo Bardazzi (website)
Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020