About us:

CCLA emerged from the efforts of the Albanian Artist Women Association “Linda”  founded in 1994 in Tirana.Cultural Center Lindart was opened in January 2001, as a project supported from January 2001 to March 2003 by the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia and DECA.
After 2004, Cultural Lindart Centre was joined by 'Anima', a group of young artists focused on new media and photography.
Our activity is based on Culture in this context understood as the heart of the human development in societies, and one of the fundamental elements in the construction of dialog within and between communities in East Europe.
Looking at cultural freedom as a basic condition for peace and mutual understanding, we build our projects by the need to promote cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialog, participation in cultural life and conservation and diffusion of photography, and the identification of the common elements for building peace and understanding between communities.www.lindart.org
The need of professional photographers drove in 2007 the Swiss Cultural Program Albania, to support CCLA implementing Projekt 5.6, a program of professional training courses for photography in Tirana.  Some of the best specialists in this field of photography and design from Albania and abroad, support the professional preparation of young Albanian photographers. Also, a website is created in order to document and uphold the traditional and new creativity in this field, thus assisting all Albanian photographers by promoting their creativity and integrating them into the international art scene. www.projekt56.com

About ‘Sotiri’ Prize:

“SOTIRI “, International Prize for Young Photographers is the new Lindart & Anima Cultural Center (CCLA) project that aims to build a new tradition for the development of  photography in Albania. This cultural project will include Albanian and international young photographers, in a competition that aims to promote photography as a language of urban movements and as an expressive meaning in development. It will create the first international photography prize for young photographers in Albania. “SOTIRI” Prize will be an exhibition of photography in Korca and Tirana including a panel discussion to create a sustainable climate of collaboration and partnership between artists and the communities they belong. This event will bring together young photographers from Albania and abroad, in a competition under the name of Kristaq Sotiri (1883-1970) from the city of Korca, whose creativity documented artistically the Albanian city life, the cultural activity and their protagonists after the models of American style. Sotiri was one of the first photographers who lead the foundation of Albanian tradition in this art field, together with other big names of Albanian photography.
1. First Prize will be given by Korça City Hall: 150 000 Leke (Albanian currency)
2. Second Prize will be given to an Albanian young photographer by Projekt 5.6, a full scholarship for our program of trainings in photography. 

About the concept

The first edition of “SOTIRI” international prize for young photographers will reflect on the history and its facts in relation to artists and contemporary realities they belong to. The concept ‘Save this’ is trying to give attention to artistic practices related to the documentation of reality through photography. The process of saving a precious moment that overpasses fugitive beauty, becomes a station for reflections and new approaches.
Photography becomes the ideal justification for putting attention on history, space and time, like signs of reality.

Save this!

History is about negotiation in between documents.
We document everything we think is important; everyone does that, personally, locally, nationally, globally….universally.
The fact that a photograph is always a reproduction of something that at a certain point of time has had a real existence leads the viewer towards the illusion, that this something is alive and contains a certain degree of “truth”. What the viewer sees in a photograph is reality in a past stage .Yet at the same time, this illustrated past has a present existence of its own.
Shooting the present reality means responding to contemporary time which has already become the past. This leads to special ways in creating facts: the fragments of time are blocks of present and reality.
Now, for certain period of time, I have been interested in the phenomena of searching in the periphery of our attention. I tried to gather facts which intrigued me some how, because they were different, unnoticed or simply ungraspable. After emphasizing this “marginal” information and putting it in the center, it has to be revised and rethought, like history need to be.
Placing the fact next to its history, the space between the two becomes important, if not most important, it becomes the space where two identities meet and coalesce. Within this resonance, new meanings can reveal and articulate themselves. The metamorphoses of these two entities into something different it’s like the concepts, being subject of revision in time and context, their shape or meaning is not identical in two spaces: this is the threshold where the fact is undergoing a permanent change and recreates itself.
History is about negotiation between facts.
When images become the testimonies of these facts and reflect that common certain degree of “truth”, they can be unforgettable signs. There are moments and facts that can die without attention. Others can overpass the threshold of anonymity and become important material to  be saved, saving in this way the time, the place, objects and subjects, ungraspable signs of their personality, it’s like a make-over of a identical situation.  This make-over becomes an image of the history, a document from the past, a fact of the present.
If you find yourself interested in the relation between the past and the present as well in those between “reality” and imagination, you can catch facts “in between”, images of personal histories that at the end of the day become part of the history, of which we all are testimonies.

Alketa Kurrizo.

Terms of application:

1. Application form.
 Please fill out all spaces on the application form.

2. Photographic work.
Portofolio, maximum of 15, minimum 5,will be sent for the application phase, attached via e-mail info@projekt.56.com, or as a CD via mail (Qendra Kulturore Lindart ;Rruga Kajo Karafili nr 54;Tirane,Albania). Make sure that the file that contains the works includes the exact title, size, technique and year of origin.

3. Artist Statement.
By sending us the artistic works, please include also the photographic project you want to participate.
How does this project relate to the subject of the exhibition concept?
Please refill the application space, related to this point.

4. CV.
Please send your CV via email or mail.

5. Deadline.
The closing date for all applications is April 15th 2008. All participants will be notified after the jury’s decision, if their work has been selected for the exhibition, in
the beginning of May.

Terms of participation:

Photographers from age of 20 to 35 years old are allowed to apply.

The application for participation is free. Everyone can take part from all over the world. All the participants must have the application form according to the paragon.
Please send us the photographic work as following:
Pixel Dimension :
Width  800 pixel
Height 800 pixel (approximately)
Resolution :
 72 pixel\inch
Format:
 JPG

If the photographic works are not sent/attached to the application form, this will be considered as not complete.

The selected artists will be reported via e-mail.
The realized works (not framed) for the exhibition should be send by the artist,
The organisaters will cover the costs by the returning of the realized works after the closure of the exhibition.

The CCLA staff will do its best to keep safe the work of every photographer from any damage, but it's not responsible for any lost or destroy out of its responsibility.