| Shifting Borders: a personal journey in two cultures |
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New photographic images from Kosova, Albania, and England taken from September 2006 - September 2007
funded by Arts Humanities Research Council and De Montfort University.
Looking at Culture: some remarks on Shifting Borders by Ian Jeffery |
| Haystacks |
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shows a series of Albanian farmers' haystacks photographed in Kosova.
My starting point for the haystacks series was the question: "What
is art?"
Having studied art for many years and visited many galleries throughout
the world I soon found that the context of a work of art played a
major part on where it is placed. For all my research, it took my
returning home to discover the real significance of my search, it
was in the fields of my former home town that I witnessed a way of
life as old as the land itself where farmers went about their business,
everything had its place. Within all this, I saw that somehow the
farmers were unconsciously creating strange, sculptures that had the
presence of modern sculptural pieces. Here part of my search was over.
I had found the meeting place between my new world of art, being an
artist, and my past, in the landscape of Kosova. |
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| Bathers |
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shows a series of women washing in Turkish baths in Albania. Here
I have taken up the classical theme of bathing women whom I have seen
in countless classical paintings. I have tried to make a modern version
of bathing women, and in my research I stumbled into a hidden dream
world of calm and purity, a safe place of mysterious beauty. These
photographs are dedicated to the hope and beauty which I found amongst
these women. |
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| Are
You Everybody? - Post-war Photographs of Kosova (June 1999 to May
2000) |
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This expression was a common first greeting to fellow Kosovan
people, when they saw each other for the first time after the war.
It was a quick way of finding out whether there was anybody lost from
their family. |
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| Marginalised
Society Contemplate Art in Rome |
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Rome
as a city was built by slaves so I began by looking at Rome’s
modern slave class. I photographed immigrants and refugees, exhausted
by their work asleep on the tram. Then I invited some of these people
to come and be photographed amongst some of Rome’s most uplifting
monuments and art galleries. |
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| Architectural
Series |
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Inspired by the photography of Cartier-Bresson my aim was to capture
candid moments where man relates to architecture. |
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| Pastoral
Life in Kosova |
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Kosova's traditions and culture are explored using the visual language
of ethnic and anthropological photo documentation. The beauty of these
traditions, little changed from the Middle Ages, are rapidly disappearing,
so their conservation in works of art are of poignant significance. |
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| Women
and Water |
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is about the beauty and imperfection of the free body underwater.
Many women feel themselves deformed by social influences particularly
in the West. In the water they are free to dissolve and re-appear
as a part of nature both classical and expressive.
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