Lost Highway Expedition Photo Book description

Lost Highway Expedition Photo Book is a selection of captioned photographs contributed by participants in the Lost Highway Expedition, which took place in August 2006 through the Western Balkans including the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Albania. The photo book contains approximately 240 pages filled with full color images and captions and a brief introduction. The photo book has 27 sections, one for each day of the expedition; each day is represented with 8 pages.

The expedition plotted a route roughly along the unfinished ‘Highway of Brotherhood and Unity’ as it was called in Yugoslav times, traveling to the nine cities of Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Pristina, Tirana, Podgorica, and Sarajevo in the Western Balkans. Although the country that this highway was meant to unify no longer exists, the highway infrastructure remains as a significant reminder of the ideals of voluntary participation, rebuilding and connectivity. Today as the highway is being expanded and the region is experiencing a different wave of building executed from individual initiative, the expedition set out to find out more about these processes and to speculate about its future.

During Lost Highway Expedition over 200 people from around Europe, the local region, and North and South America participated along the route with partner organizations in each city in activities ranging from discussions, public art actions, guided tours, visits to archives, and picnics. As everyone organized their own journey, the makeup of the group was different in each city. Yet it temporarily cohered around points of common interest to investigate the abrupt and continuing structural and visual transformation of these cities that is both the result and the engine of the changing urban, economic, and social realities of the Western Balkans and of the future of Europe.

The photo book chronicles each day of the expedition from a multitude of mobile views. The format is unique as every day has its own organizing principle. Recurrent topics for investigation that become are taken up as a focus for individual days include self-organization, independent and official building projects, memory and future, unfinished projects, temporary society, self-organization, massive movement, urban blocks, monuments, simple solutions, next generation, vistas, excess, floating structures, and more. Also specific concerns of each city, like independence, sin city, parallelism, or solidarity thread through the chronological order of the book’s several hundred photos making apparent the relay of connections that exist between the cities.

Photographs were solicited from Lost Highway Expedition participants in an open call, garnering more than 24,000 images. Several hundred photos make up the publication and work is included from each person who made a submission. The book has been edited to select images that convey an understanding of a specific place along the expedition route through a striking simplicity of visual means. This results in an in-depth visual document of the region with a focus on the present state of urban and highway ‘scapes which provide a glimpse at the future of the visual and spatial makeup of the Western Balkans.

Lost Highway Expedition Photo Book is published by Skuc Gallery, Centrala Foundation for Future Cities and School of Missing Studies and is part of the project Europe Lost and Found.

Authors: Kasper Akhoj, Azra Aksamija, Artingeneering, Stefanie Busch, Yane Calovski, Katherine Carl, Ana Dzokic, Giulia Fiocca, Barbara Galassi, Hristina Ivanoska, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Susanne Kass, Ivan Kucina, Hugo Lammerink, Kavior Moon, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mortenbock, Marc Neelen, Angel Nevarez, Jaume Nualert, Pilar Ortiz, Aleksandra Petrusevska, Marjetica Potrc, Kyong Park, Vahida Ramujkic, Arnoud Schuurman, Laia Sole, Valerie Tevere, Paola Velasquez, Velimir Zernovski.

Editorial Board: Azra Aksamija, Yane Calovski, Ana Dzokic, Alenka Gregoric, Hristina Ivanoska, Ivan Kucina, Kavior Moon, Marc Neelen, Marjetica Potrc, Kyong Park, Patrick Ward,

Editors: Katherine Carl, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss
Technical Director and Design: Ajdin Basic
Proofreading & Redaction: Kavior Moon
Coordination: Skuc Gallery

This publication is made possible with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia. Additional support provided by Ministry of Culture of Serbia and Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Distributor: Veenman Publishers, Rotterdam
Printer: TBD
Number of pages: 240
Full color, 18 cm x 21 cm
Print run: 1500
Release date: October 2007