Bjeshket e Namuna, the Cursed Mountains, Albania

These pictures are part of a photo reportage produced in the Bjeshket e Namuna, the Cursed Mountains, in the north of Albania, close tot he borders to Kosov and Montenegro, only two weeks ago. The portrayed people are living near Theth, a town in the heart of the alpine wilderness of this part of the Albanian Alps. There is a man who survived the spiral of violence and revenge of the kanun, the old set of laws developed in the 15th century, after the fall of the communist regime in 1990 these ancestral laws had a bloody revival. After his brother was killed because of a few square meters of land, he was obliged to take vengeance, so he shot the murderer and was hidden by his family for years in a secret place.
The woman sitting on the bed was also living for years in fear of the violent actions of another family's members with which her family carried out a cruel blood feud.
The old woman on the third picture suffered in a different way of the hard life in the mountains: her husband was one of the many men who managed to leave the country, more than forty years ago. He never came back, she never left her home.