Tirana Photo Festival

Photography exhibition. 2nd Edition. 8 – 15 October 2019, National Historical Museum, Tirana.

The second edition of the Tirana Photo Festival, an important photography event in Tirana, was organised these past days. The first edition was held last year, from 1–9 November, with the theme: "Promoting Tirana Through Photography". The festival includes not only the photography competition, but also training, visits and talks with schools to promote photography and the festival's theme, the exhibition running from 8 to 15 October, prizes for the best photographers, as well as a series of workshops and photo tours and photo walks for enthusiasts, held during the festival days.

The theme of the exhibition and of this edition was: "A Piece of Albania… Albania's Natural and Cultural Heritage".

100 photographs were exhibited out of over 1000 submitted for the competition, which this year ran from 1 May to 1 September 2019. 3 photo series by 3 professional photographers were also exhibited. The competition jury selected the exhibition's photos and the festival's 6 winners.

Tirana Photo Festival is a project of DMO ALBANIA (Destination Management Organization), which also manages the capital's tourism portal Visit Tirana, which, besides promoting the capital and providing abundant information for tourists in three languages, has for three years now run seasonal photography competitions with the season's hashtag, #TiranaSpring, #TiranaSummer, #TiranaAutumn, #TiranaWinter, #TiranaAutumn2019. In total, since 2016, 11 seasonal competitions have been organised with massive participation, mainly from young photographers. The engagement, promotion and appreciation of young people is an extraordinary value of these competitions, which has caused this community to keep growing.

Sponsors of the event were: Municipality of Tirana, Ministry of Culture, Fuji Film Albania and the National Museum. Special thanks go to the competition jury: Roland Tasho, Leon Cika, Gent Shkullaku, as well as to photographer Olsi Beci.

EJAlbum together with AVizion curated the exhibition, including the printing of the photographs and the visual communication. The exhibition's curator was Elton Koritari, administrator of EJAlbum.