Wandrille Potez: I knew that there was some difficulty to connect about the history in this house, in this very particular relation that Albanians have with it, and I just talked to this guy about his project and it was a very nice conversation. About migration, because he’s specialist in it, about Palestine, about connection between experiences, and he just– I told him that I was in the Vila 31, and I saw the switch – suddenly he became quite unfriendly.
Diona Budima: Oh.
Wandrille Potez: Very [unfriendly] in a way. And because he’s sure that it could be, it should be a place reserved for Albanian artists because they need it. So I first explained that all artists need it, not only in Albania, and he tried to explain to me that because of the difficulties here, not only because of the history, they need a place for them. But for me it’s the same things that I heard sometimes in France when some French people are afraid to see foreign workers, because they think that foreign workers will take the work of French ones, and I think it’s a very, very dangerous idea. Because art is also a kind of work, not so different in every kind of practice, and for me the comparison is valid, so…
I just realized that later on my bike, when I came to you, and I thought, “Oh, I should explain to him why my mind was in this way, and why I was surprised […]” you know, because it sounds very nationalistic in a way, and very xenophobic. So to think that only Albanian artists have something to think, and to say, and to show about Balkan or about Albania, I think it’s a very bad idea. So it was also a good experience in a way because I was, thanks to this short conversation, able to understand why it was so difficult during the previous sessions, even between some residents, to manage this kind of trauma, but it’s still interesting.
Diona Budima: Yeah.
Wandrille Potez: Sorry to start with this because it’s very recent.
Diona Budima: No, that’s actually part of our conversation. Yeah.
Wandrille Potez: And I was not very into these problematic questions because during our session it was super fluent, and we had discussions, very nice ones with all the residents, and…
Diona Budima: Discussions about being here?
Wandrille Potez: Yes about everything…
Diona Budima: Everything ?
Wandrille Potez: Everything. Not only this, that was also very good.
Diona Budima: And how how did you feel being it is a site of very difficult heritage…
Wandrille Potez: It’s a very difficult heritage, but for me it’s heritage, and I’m working on heritage in every field, and usually heritage is problematic, not only the stones themselves but the use of it, like, even for the monasteries, for example, some people think that they represent only the “real” Albania, because “christian” Albania. So it’s always very political, not only this house, but every kind of heritage can be instrumentalized, can be the object of some political projects, and I’m trying to study it, not only in an aesthetic way.
That’s why it was very important for me to– When I presented these prints in Paris, to say that it’s not all Albania, and that this region is not only Christian, not only monasteries, so I organized a concert with Sufi Albanian music – with views of these churches around, to show to the Parisian people that Albania is also this, with this Ottoman heritage. And… So for me the same tension when I speak about churches and– when I speak about this house.
Diona Budima: Okay. Let’s take a step back, and maybe tell us a bit more about your practice in general. Actually, could you state your full name, where and when you were born just for the record, and then maybe tell us a bit about your background, and how you came into your artistic practice.
Wandrille Potez: So, my name is Wandrille Potez, I’m French. I’m from Normandy, and I was born in 1996, and I was formerly – I studied history of art. So, I’m supposed to be a historian. That’s the beginning. And slowly I came to photography as a part of art history because I needed to take many many pictures to document my research. At the beginning it was mostly decorative arts in Saxony, from the early 18th century. So something completely, or apparently completely different. But I find now some connections because I worked on the taste at the Saxon court during this period for oriental art, and I was very interested in this “strange” Europe, like, how to explain this kind of interest for other places outside Europe at this time, also for political reasons.
So for me the discovery of the Balkan space was connected with this kind of research because I was very interested by central Europe and after by southern Europe. I am sure there is a link somewhere. After I worked as a researcher, as a curator, and finally my biggest project failed after three or four years of work between Germany and France, and I had some time to just go back into my personal projects, to go back in Albania, by bike at the beginning, and now by foot mainly, to document heritage, and it was the occasion to be, like, really a photographer and to be involved in artistic stuff only – so it’s still connected with history but in a different way.
Diona Budima: And what was the big project that failed if I may ask?
Wandrille Potez: It was an exhibition about a marvelous collection of French furniture from the 18th century rediscovered in the storage of the Museum for Decorative Arts in Dresden, during the past decade. And all these incredible, rare objects were restored and, it was very unknown because after the war many people thought that this collection was destroyed, and in fact not at all. So it was, it is a huge rediscovery for the French decorative arts because this kind of objects in France disappeared during the Revolution, massively, or just after. And this furniture with such a high quality from France for a royal court in Germany, it’s something very, very special. And it never changed since the 18th century, so the conditions of the furniture were also exceptional. That’s why I wanted to show it in Paris and to publish it in the largest way possible.
But finally, it was the year of the Olympic games and for all the cultural institutions in Paris, it was very complicated because many of them were closed for the preparations in the city of the festivities later, and the planned exhibition space – mine– as well. So finally we had to postpone. Perhaps one day…
Diona Budima: [inaudible]
Wandrille Potez: It was a very nice project. I would [like to] be able to do it later.
Diona Budima: So is heritage preservation and restoration were sort of the main…
Wandrille Potez: Yes.
Diona Budima: …the main of your work.
Wandrille Potez: It’s connected with the urgency of protection, like the necessity to show this furniture as these churches, to preserve it, and also to connect histories, inbetween France and Germany for example, and also here between Europe and Albania because in a way, in Western Europe we see Albania only as a Muslim country. And for many people in France, it’s a huge, it’s a big surprise to realize that this kind of Byzantine or post-Byzantine churches are not only in Greece. Because this current border is something, just in mind, but for architecture it means nothing. Many artists who painted these churches worked also in the north of Greece, so I guess they were connected to Athos, it’s very connected.
So I worked usually with this kind of topic, especially when it’s necessary, when something happens. In this case for Albania it was because my first visit was very impressive : the churches were in very, very bad conditions and we had to do something. I couldn’t alone, so at my scale it was just to document it and to hope for a better future, and now I see that there are many local initiatives to restore it, to take care of it – since the last week there is also governmental projects to think about the future of this region [Drino Valley], I hope in a nice way… it’s not evident, but I’m very happy to see this kind of new hope. Also thanks to photography sometimes, for some people, they are surprised to see a foreign interest for the local heritage and it can change their mind about it. So that’s why I think it’s very interesting to have sometimes foreign views on your own country, even on mine.
Diona Budima: So you had been here before and that drew you to apply to the residency?
Wandrille Potez: Yes, many times. The first time in 2017, and I came five years later. So the first time was by bike between Italy and Greece and I discovered just by chance Albania on my way, from the north to the south and I was amazed in every directions possible. It was a huge, beautiful surprise, also because it was very unexpected in a way. I had a completely wrong idea of it. I had no precise idea but I was surprised and I wanted to go back also to see Tirana again because I had this very special connection with the city almost 10 years ago. And when I came back in 2022, it was completely different. I wasn’t even able to recognize the city. My favorite parts disappeared completely.
So I realized that all the things I saw in the countryside were also on the point to disappear. Even the things which seem eternal, like biblical landscapes, like something very [still]… like ruined churches. We could have this impression that it’s like this forever and I realized thanks to the example of Tirana, that in fact everything it’s on the point to change. All the natural reserves are on the point to be destroyed, the churches were at this time going to fall down. So I decided to start this photographical project during this second stay in 2022. I took many, many, many photographs and I lost all of them just after this travel. So I lost two months of work when I came back to Paris. It was very “funny” for me – also in connection with the prejudices about Albania -, because usually people [in France] said, “Oh be careful, you will lost your material in Albania, it’s a very dangerous place,” and at the end it was stolen in Paris in a very chic area, and I never, never lost something in Albania …
Diona Budima: It was stolen in Paris?
Wandrille Potez: Yes.
Diona Budima: Oh, okay.
Wandrille Potez: So it was very funny also for me to realize that… okay the other prejudices are confirmed, be careful in Paris, the danger is not where we think it is. And that, it was a good motivation also for me to come back and okay, perhaps the first photographs were very bad, it’s a chance to lose it. So since I come at least once a year and now twice or more.
Diona Budima: And could you describe the work that you did here, the form that is– so what can we see here?
Wandrille Potez: Yes. So this part is only one part of my work in Albania. It’s now the main part because I had more time to research on it, but it’s – this project especially – is connected with this region in the south around Gjirokastër, where I “discovered” [churches], sure I was not the first visitor – but it was a discovery for me, and it’s important to say it because many people have this kind of exploration projects in mind, in an adventurous way, and for me it’s quite dangerous to think that the spaces are virgin, like, I don’t want to be in this kind of colonial perspective, to consider Albania or Balkan as something to discover, like no, there is already life before you’re there, and also even on these churches, there are studies on them so…
Diona Budima: How do you research them?
Wandrille Potez: It was not my specialty at all as an historian of art, so I had this enthusiasm to discover something completely new for me and unknown. And I discovered for the first time one, and I see first the buildings and I decided to search later to understand what it is, what is the era, from which period it is. But the first sensation for me is very sensual, something connected with the stone, with the reality, the most concrete one, and research came later, during this residency for example, because usually before I was on the countryside to take some photographs but not to research, I didn’t have enough time. To just be on the path, to see the monuments, and to enjoy, to stay for a long time around, to be able to open them.
So to resume it’s a kind of constellation of monasteries as we can find in some famous part of Greece (in Meteora, or in Athos, or in Peloponnese), and a very harmonious ensemble of religious buildings – in a very special landscape. And that’s why I decided also to present it as an ensemble because they are all in the middle between… in the same situation between the bottom of the valley and the summit of these small mountains in the south, in a high situation, quite hidden when you come, but from the church you can see, a huge panorama of the valley, sometimes until Greece.
So there is also this very special connection between nature and stones also because of, or thanks to the abandon in a way, it’s so well “preserved”. Okay, the conditions of the building are very bad, but thanks to this isolation, the nature is still amazing. It’s one of the most beautiful nature I saw in Europe. And I think Albania is one of the rare spaces where you can find this quality of nature, where it’s still intact.
Diona Budima: And what camera did you use to shoot this?
Wandrille Potez: I’m using a Leica Q3, because it’s very strong, so very solid.
Diona Budima: Yeah. And could you speak a bit about your aesthetic choices? These are all– I mean the vision is very unified, the perspective.
Wandrille Potez: Yes. Because I’m working on the idea of inventory and to document it because for me, because of my art history background, we need some inventories to conserve. So even aesthetically, I think in my mind it’s something very clear, that we need inventories especially in this kind of endangered places. It’s, for me, the only way to preserve it, not artistically but just also scientifically if we have to restore it later it’s good to have some kind of documentation. So a huge part of my work is not aesthetic at all, just technical views. And I’m trying also to connect my work with this kind of scientific/documentary tradition.
Diona Budima: And I wanted to ask about that because in your– you also write these personal narratives that accompany the pictures, and the writing persona is very– sounds a lot like this 19th century explorer.
Wandrille Potez: Yes.
Diona Budima: And because you said this before, you’re also very critical of that, like, western explorer who comes to the, you know, quote unquote “orient…”
Wandrille Potez: There is a paradox.
Diona Budima: Right, and discovers the orient. So could you tell me a bit about this tension in your work, being sort of aware of the fetishistic nature of that figure, but also kind of using the romanticism of that figure.
Wandrille Potez: Yes, it’s the heart, I think, of my project, like, really it’s a tension I want to find because we need these kind of beautiful images to have good representation of our heritage in a way, especially in Albania because… like not only in Albania, but in this country with political difficulties, connected with culture… Because, many artists worked on bad constructions in Tirana for example, on destructions of the coast, on the poverty, and I do it also, but I find, I want to find another way, more aesthetic perhaps, also to give a better idea, even for Albanians, of the heritage, to show that it could be – even in bad conditions – beautiful. I’m not afraid by beauty.
So that’s why it’s very connected with 19th century [aesthetics]. But I don’t want to do this, just take some beautiful pictures and come back to France to edit a beautiful book. It’s not my objective. If I can publish a book later with this kind of research, it could be great, but I can’t do this without a connection with Albania, with Albanians. My idea is very connected to bring this images in Albania. I do it for Albanians. I want to think about it with Albanians, even in Paris. The talk that we organized with the Vila last week was with Falma Fshazi, she’s Franco-Albanian and she works on heritage and art, in a curatorial dimension as well, and it was very nice to think with her about the future of these monuments.
I don’t want to just take this beauty and keep it for me, it’s not– that’s how I’m trying to do something different and to connect not only with the history, but also with the places. That’s why I wanted to do this residency here. Like, I’m trying to, also with Ilda Mara who is very involved in this kind of heritage questions in Albania, to think about the future. For me the goal is not only to promote the idea of restoration of the places. It’s connected with, I just– for sure, I don’t want just to take a picture. I want to– I’m also a journalist, so I want to speak about the churches, I want to publish it, to keep some attention on it. So it’s a kind of self mission.
But I saw in many different places that if you just think about restoration, it’s just a part of the job, it’s very useless in a way because you give the idea of, okay, this place has a value because we decided to restore it. But at the moment we consider that this place has a value, we want to “protect” it : we close the door because Albanians, like, because of their own prejudice, think that they couldn’t use this place correctly. And it’s very dangerous, and it kills the heritage as a lively space. We have to think about restoration, but we have to think about opening the spaces, about… we have to think about the access of the spaces, the protection of the area, in the most global way, also the preservation of the nature.
That’s why I choose black and white, I don’t want to transform these places as a tourist destination. For sure, I want to keep attention because these places need visitors, and all the villages around need new people inside, even for local families, they need a good reason to come back and to have foreigners, visitors, tourists, to reopen the coffees in the middle of the village, to find new dynamic and present heritage as a chance and not as a charge. But if you do it in the current governmental way, you kill the space, like, you decided to put asphalt on the tracks. So you give the idea to bring some cars, high next to the monasteries, you destroy the nature around, you destroy the spirit of the place, of the spaces.
You destroy the animals life because now we have to consider this heritage as, even inside the churches, as natural place because it’s a refuge for bats, for snakes, for insects, and I think I’m trying, in Albania, to think about it with all the people I’m trying to know, to try to change the mind collectively, as a discussion. That’s also a way for me to resist against my own orientalistic aesthetic, so it’s a kind of balance.
Diona Budima: Yeah. And I mean if these places open up and have more tourists, do you think they would lose the mysticism that we see in your pictures? Even though these are, you know, you say you’re doing an inventory, but they do have this mysticism.
Wandrille Potez:Yes.
Diona Budima: In them, which comes from them being half ruined, close and isolated. Yeah.
Wandrille Potez: And it’s very difficult to think about about it as a global thing because usually the the local idea of restoration is to make the buildings solid, like, I think it’s connected with an idea of masculinity: if it’s good, if it’s valuable, it has to be a resistant, and [in fact] it’s very fragile and I think we couldn’t– we cannot change it, it will stay fragile. And we have to protect this idea of fragility as a condition of the preservation of the space.
Diona Budima: And you mentioned Cultural Heritage without Borders as an organization, did you have any kind of collaboration with them or you…?
Wandrille Potez: Yes, because– very independently but I proposed, last year, in 2024, I prepared a file, an application to bring some foreign money, especially from America in this region, thanks to the World Monuments Fund, so thanks to the pictures, thanks to some writings, I explained that it needs urgent help, and this help is– so it worked, the churches were selected to be a part of the “Watch List” of 2025. And it’s– now the relay of this operation is Albanian Cultural Heritage Without Borders, and they do a great job because they work with local archaeologists, with local materials, and some churches, like this one for example in Dhuvjan, “Shën Kolli” : we can see the light through the roof [on this photograph], but it was in 2023, and since the last year, thanks to Cultural Heritage Without Borders, there is a new beautiful stone roof, in perfect conditions, but something that’s very discrete, a work [that’s] very respectful of the area.
And this kind of– just to respond to your previous question, this kind of tension between, mysticism and problematic conditions is also something that interests me in my writings, because when I enter in a church like this, I find it, like, wonderful, you know, it’s beautiful like this because of or thanks to the holes in the roof there is light on the frescos and it’s a chance, a beautiful chance to be able to see it like this. Very few people saw it like this. And at the same time there is this kind of anxiety because you see, you know that it’s on the point to disappear, the building [if it’s left abandoned] or the atmosphere, if they restore it. So there is also a kind of contradiction, and I’m very into– when I choose to take a photo to try to deal with it, like, a mix between admiration and anxiety. So…
Diona Budima: Are there any specific texts or authors that references, that inform and inspire your work? I saw in the wall there you have exposed French historians. Could you tell us about those?
Wandrille Potez: There are very, very special books. There were not at all my references before. And I’m working usually, in this area, without any references even in literature. So I’m not very into adventure narratives. I find it very often quite egocentric. So I have some trouble with it. Even now that’s interesting to see that in France, the most famous French literature in this way is always very [into] right[-wing] positions, and I found it interesting [to notice it]. So I don’t want to be a part of it. That’s why I’m trying to see it in a political way. These books are something completely different – it wasn’t [personal] literature references – but I discovered them in the library, the personal library of Enver Hoxha [in the Vila 31], and I wanted to come in this residency to connect my work with the reasons of the condition of my subject. Because these churches are in part abandoned because of this broken link between population and religious places, because of the policy of Enver Hoxha.
[The people] were not allowed anymore, from the middle of the 60s, to enter in the churches, to use them for religious purposes. So to be in this villa was – I wanted to find explanations, and I was [also] in the archives, the archives of the National Institute for Cultural Heritage. They are beautiful material, like photographs of these churches from the 60s, from the 70s, 80s, mostly from the communist regime, and I found this paradox also very, very interesting for my subject, because I realized that many stories I heard in the villages were legends, it was “fake” stories. They told me that communists wanted to destroy the church, but in fact… [That’s true that] yes, like in the north, Catholic churches were very hardly destroyed, even in the center of the cities like Përmet, they destroyed the churches to build new cultural places.
But in this region, in a very strange way, (I need also more answers, I have to ask people in Albania [still now] I realized that at the same time they decided to have very hard policy against religion, they decided to bring in these places historians, archaeologists, photographers to document it and to take care of it in a way. So it’s a very complex history because also for nationalistic reasons, they had to protect the heritage, to present Albania as a great cultural, historical country, also to – against Greece, against Yugoslavia. So by chance, these churches are in the heart of this kind of contradictions of the regime, and I found also this contradiction about my own subject in the library of Enver Hoxha.
Because I wanted to find answers, I looked at all the books and I thought I will find only books against religion, like, very critical books, and not at all… For sure I found some things about atheism, about history of the destruction of Christian Europe, and it was quite “funny” because it’s a kind of projection of what Hoxha wanted to do here. So I wanted to play a bit with this kind of references, and also with other references, like, very religious one. He was not– we can see in this library, not only hate of religion, but fear of it, fascination for it. There are books not only against, but on religion, even on medieval Islam, many books on the connection between political power, that’s why I saw about Islam probably, and religious power, like, how people can use religion against the state.
There were also some books for example about great Christian figures or characters as Jeanne d’Arc [35:12] in France, and I found it so [relevant] to imagine that it could be also a source of inspiration for Enver Hoxha, to realize that if the people in his country were religious, they could fight him and win perhaps. So – and I found also a novel on a conversion story. And I found it also very [stunning] to imagine in this space, because it was his bedroom, to imagine that Hoxha, like, he decided to destroy the churches, to [prevent] access to it. And at the same same time, in his bed, he’s able to read a novel about a great, pure conversion to Catholicism, to Christianism. And I found it very, very interesting also to understand this very paradoxical history : because it [The Churches] seems abodonned, but I saw in many places that it wasn’t.
There is some life [which] continues in many different interesting ways. You can see some lights in some churches even when there is no priest. You can see new small icons just put in front of the [panels] of the iconostasis [36:32]. So he failed in a way. These religious spaces are still alive. And I had, some time, during these two months to read some of these books – because it was in French, and I discovered so many, just by chance, but connections with my interests. For example, it was very interesting to find Résurrection des villes mortes by [Marcel] Brion [37:00] because it speaks about disappeared civilizations, and he tried to explain, like, to speak about it in a very romantic way like Incas or lost civilizations, and I realized that because of Enver, in a way ancient Albania, because of this acculturation process, this religious heritage are also a part of a lost civilization because the link between the society and this heritage is broken. And I’m trying to do the same [as Brion], to speak about it and to keep it alive, and to propose another life, like, if we find another way to use the sites and to open them for tourism in a way. So it was one of my readings.
Also another one was very interesting, and I prepare a small publication on it for the– it was supposed to be ready this weekend but finally not yet. I found a poetry [a book of poems] from Joachim Du Bellay from the 16th century, and it’s poetry on ruins at a time when Du Bellay is in Rome during the 16th century, during the Renaissance and he described the ruins of ancient Rome, and it was like the same process for me to realize that I was exactly in the same situation in a foreign country trying, by art, to speak about something lost, also in a political way because he speaks about the reasons of the lost.
He speaks about the pope in a very bad way because for him it’s a, like, the contrary of the beautiful Roman Empire and he speaks about the fall of the eagle and I found it so interesting to compare with Albanian eagle. So in this publication I’m trying to mix my photographs and the poems of Du Bellay because it speaks about the same thing. It describes the ruins with the sky that enters in the building. It describes the difficulty to represent this kind of paradoxical beauty. So him, through poetry, and me through photography. So it was very… it was super nice to have this time to think about it, to connect, like, each photograph with each poem and to try to do something.
Diona Budima: To end, could you tell us what you’re excited about in your near future and where do you see your project going next?
Wandrille Potez: I think it’s still the beginning for me about this topic. So … Can’t wait to publish this small book, and also to speak about it in France because it’s in French. And to prepare a bigger book on it, like a real one, with archives. So thanks to my work during this residency, I know now that there is enough material to mix and connect the archives from the National Institute of Cultural Heritage and my photographs, not only stylistically but to connect the history in every dimension, to connect my work from France and the local work from this past by local photographers, because there is also this kind of documentalistic… photographical tradition in Albania thanks Marubi and all this history. And I would [like to] make a book around this… on this connection.
I would also [like to] poursue my project on Albania, it’s not only on churches, but on all the places that I find still very interesting – with this kind of urgency – like on the point to disappear but which seem still intact. In many photographs I I took, we couldn’t imagine that it could change next month or next year and I’m working on this idea in many different places. So that’s why I go by foot in the north, in the mountain, also near the lakes, around the Prespa lakes, which are, for me, one of the most beautiful and interesting areas in Albania, and not only in Albania because it’s connected with Greece and Macedonia. So it’s also this trans-Balkanic approach that I cherish. Also archeological sites: like Amantia, Byllis, Antigonia, Finiq, Butrint… All these places change now because there is this huge governmental project to build new concrete entrances, to make it accessible in a way, but also more fancy and more “European” in the worst way possible. And I’m trying to document all these places before, not in a nostalgic perspective, but just to keep an image, as a proof that it was like this. Probably in a few years other persons will find other interests in Albania. So I don’t want to be pessimistic at all, but I’m trying to arrive on time in this kind of very strange, specific places. And I would also, like to go further on this kind of topic all around. I need more time… I have to come back, that’s my conclusion!
Diona Budima: Okay, thank you very much!
Wandrille Potez: Thanks for your questions.
