For part of 2023, you could find me working at a hostel in Shkodër, Albania. I would often visit a local second-hand market where you could find thrifted clothing and knick-knacks for about 50 cents a pop. One day, amongst the sky-high piles of clothes and broken toys, I found an old 35mm point and shoot camera. I paid the storeholder 500 lek (~€5). Praying it would work, I brought it to my 8-bed mixed dormitory (what I called home), and cleaned the rust away with my bunk-mate’s nail polish remover. To my surprise, it worked. Not only did it work, but it ignited a passion for capturing moments in time - creating and sharing memories of this life.

Almost one year later, a friend visiting Shkodër told me that the market had burnt down. Thinking about the piles of clothes paired with the oppressive Albanian heat, perhaps this is unsurprising. But there is a kind of poetry to the situation. The Albanian word for “fire” is “zjarr”. Zjarr can be a literal translation for the word fire, but it can also be used to describe something intense or passionate. Capturing moments of memories that pass by in a flash, only to be revealed later via chemical reaction. One day the market was there, the next day it wasn’t, but the moments captured in film are stuck in time.