LOCATING LOCAL IDENTITY IN PHOTOGRAPHY – THE CASE OF MIRDITA, NORTHERN ALBANIA ANDREAS HEMMING They said it was the custom, and must be. —Mary Edith Durham 1909: 319. The northern Albanian region of Mirdita, when addressed or referenced in a conversation or debate is a polarising icon. In my travels across Albania this became more than obvious in the varied reactions I received after I mentioned that I was living and working there. Mirdita - and the northern Albanian mountain regions in general, of which Mirdita is a part - represents for Albanians the essence of Albanian (cultural) identity, both in its most negative and its most positive aspects (cf. Schwandner-Sievers 2004: 109). Thanks to the works of authors as varied as Mary Edith Durham (1909) and Ismail Kadare (2008), Mirdita and the Mirditans have acquired a mythic aura. The role Mirdita has purportedly played in the development of ideal types in terms of Albanian family and clan structures, blood feud and kanun structures 1 , local resistance to the Ottomans (as well as to the Serbs, Greeks, King Zog, the Italians, Germans, socialists, evangelical Christians, Islamic fundamentalists etc.) have done their part as well in establishing this aura. Attempts to relativise or even falsify this stereotype are often rejected vehemently. This stereotype has of course not gone unnoticed in the region itself and it is carried with pride. It plays a major role in how the region and its residents perceive themselves in discourse. The question that I will attempt to approach here is how the perusal of photographs underlines, describes and verifies local identity and the criteria which are applied in their interpretation and reinterpretation. After a brief introduction to the region and its population I will discuss this issue with reference to the reception and perception of such portraits in two exhibits in the local museum, in how they provide a point of orientation for understanding events, and in how they are used to develop histories.