In the run-up to the country’s parliamentary elections in 2013 Jutta Benzenberg spent the titular 30 days accompanying and photographing the challenger Edi Rama on the hustings in Albania. The result is not a reportage of the election campaign, but a stunning portrait of people in an age characterised by pathos and mass rallies.
Jutta Benzenberg succeeds in depicting people in all their individuality and idiosyncrasy while capturing their attendance as participants at large, emotionally charged events. Since the early 1990s the photographer has been travelling to Albania, a country that still has something mythical about it for the rest of Europe.
Together with her husband, the author Ardian Klosi, now deceased, she has published several books of fine art photography on Albania: Albanisches Überleben (1993, FOTOHOF>EDITION published by Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg), Sombre Beauty (2005, self-published), and Ahead with the Past (2011, FOTOHOF>EDITION, Salzburg). No other (female) photographer has been able to delve as deeply into the culture and politics, the mentality, and the way of life of the people in this country.

Jutta Benzenberg lives and works in Munich, Berlin and Tirana.