The Photo Collection of Edith Durham

Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo, 1903 - 1913

ED018_RAI 400.13220 Albania. Vukël. Cross bearing an image of the deceased in the Catholic graveyard of Vukël in Kelmendi territory (Photo: Edith Durham, 18 May 1908). “Vukli was my destination. But the snow lay thick on the pass ’twixt it and Seltze, half-molten, unpassable for horses. We had to return down the valley to Ura Tamara, and ascend the valley of Tsem Vuklit–the track fair and the vale wide and grassy, a great loneliness upon it, for neither man nor beast had come up from the plains. Some primitive dwellings, made by walling up the front of caves in the cliff high above, caught my eye. At the head, the valley is wide and undulating. We rode straight to the little church and its house, which formed one building. Out came the most jovial of all Franciscans, Padre Giovanni, stout and white moustachioed, but bearing his seventy- five years lightly. An Italian by birth, one of the few foreigners left in the Albanian Church, he has spent forty years at Vukli – said he was now Albanian, was priest, doctor, and judge, and that in Vukli he meant to end his days.” (Edith Durham, High Albania, 1909).