I must admit a certain inclination toward the particular aesthetic which the Balkans region presents. The orange tiled roofs, sometimes kempt, sometimes not, set against bright blue skies rolling hills and green mountains offer a visage I feel to be ripe in the necessary qualities of dramatic landscape. Throughout the regional trip I found myself consistently documenting nearly every new environment I came in contact with, of which there were many. Some may have memories of me on the trip pointing the camera lens at them from a distance, or in a state of unobservance while I ambled along the streets aiming the camera upwards towards the tops of buildings.
Yet I also find that there is a self perpetuated bias towards this environment that comes with me as a person foreign to this place. I say that I find it beautiful, but in what capacity do I observe its beauty? I may find streets in my hometown similar in functional and social quality to those in Bosnia, or Albania, yet I do not find these beautiful. To me it is the unknown quality, and not the aesthetic quality then, that I see as being beautiful here. It is the state of its unreachable, almost incomprehensible nature that I find, and I suspect many others find so attractive. In essence, that it is not of myself, or my familiar environment, thus it is beautiful.
What I want, what I desire most in the coming month, is to find a sort of familiar beauty in this place. To no longer see it as exotic or foreign, but as close to my personhood.