Albania: The Alphabet of Life is a documentary series by Bulgarian photographer Yordan Yordanov (known professionally as Yuri) during his travels in Albania in 1994-1995. Produced with the support of the Swiss foundation Pro Helvetia, the work focuses on rural and mountainous regions at a moment when Albania remained largely closed off, culturally and visually, from Western Europe.
Working exclusively in black and white, Yordanov photographs everyday life without staging or intervention. His attention is directed toward labor, ritual, movement through landscape, and the physical presence of people within demanding environments. Figures appear carrying wood, tending fields, walking long distances, or standing momentarily still against a vast terrain. The images are modest in scale, restrained in contrast, and deliberately untheatrical.
The series resists narrative dramatization. Instead, it accumulates meaning through repetition and proximity: work as an organizing force, landscape as both shelter and burden, and the human body as the measure of endurance. The photographs neither exoticize nor explain. They remain factual, attentive, and quietly insistent.
No standalone monograph dedicated exclusively to the Albanian series was published during the photographer’s lifetime. Selections from the work have appeared in exhibition catalogues and institutional collections, mainly in Bulgaria.
