FLIGHT FROM PARADISE
I live in London, a great city no doubt but a jungle of concrete and glass nonetheless. When living within a city, I often long for the beauty that only nature can bring, and I believe many others do too. This feeling of longing for nature only comes when you have spent so long in an environment without it, this environment seems to feed that feeling of needing an escape. This feeling is the reason my girlfriend and I decided to walk and photograph the Peaks of the Balkans trail, a circular trail that runs through rural Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro.
Following that previous idea, I wanted to create this book as an escape from the modern world, exploring the beauty of the wild and mountainous Balkan landscape. However, after spending some time with the images and following the constant talk of immigration in the British news cycle, specifically the discussions surrounding Albanians, I realized that these images tell a story of a land where many feel the need to leave. My initial perception of the landscape as a wild and beautiful escape was that of privilege, as it was an escape for me, however for them it is a land that many must leave behind.
One of the news articles I watched featured a village elder and a mother talking about how their country is slowly depopulating. People have to leave due to poverty, as they simply do not see a future for their children if they stay. In particular, entire villages in the highland regions are emptying. They are having to leave behind their beautiful country and home, through no fault of their own. They must travel to lands more prosperous so that their children will have opportunities that they did not.
It seems as though in today's world we cannot survive without feeling the need to escape to nature and we cannot survive while completely living within it. We are required to live further and further from our natural roots if we wish to thrive in the modern ways of life. This seems to be coming at the cost to many communities who were once able to sustain themselves in their natural environment, but are now having to uproot themselves.
