Dilaver Pepa

Pristina | Date: February 13, 2022 | Duration: 84 minutes

They started with the craft of photography… little by little, little by little, my sisters started… I had three sisters. One of them… the oldest did not work with photography. Lirije Pepa was working, the second one with Mersije Pepa. They’re the ones that have actually worked with photography their whole lives. […] We all actually worked with photography, the whole family, besides our mom and our big sister (laughs). […] I was nine or ten years old, I’m not so sure now… And they changed the type of identification documents. In the Dukagjin villages it was a little bit of an issue for women to come and get photographed… you know, the situation was like that, more… more or less. And some man came… the head of the village of Prilep as far as I remember, some Dulje, they called him like that. And while talking to my dad… this was in ‘69, ‘68… I don’t know for sure now you know… ‘Can you come photograph them?’ He knew that my sister worked with the camera and we made a deal, him with my father, with my sister… and we went, my sister and I. I was a child, so I held the backdrop, you know, I was helping out. And we started with the village of Prilep, so all the villages of Dukagjin, with Prilep and coming by Deçan and… Strellc and that side… then here on this side by Pristina, Zahaq and all these that we photographed. It was a very big deal back then.


Anita Susuri (interviewer), Renea Begolli (Camera)

Dilaver Pepa was born in 1955 in Peja. He studied Law at the University of Prishtina. In 1981, he started working as a photographer for the Museum of Revolution in Pristina until 1992. Coming from a long family tradition in photography, in the early ‘90s, he opened his private photographic studio called Foto Pepa in Pristina. He worked in his studio until he retired. Currently, Mr. Pepa lives in Pristina with his family.