DESIRED LANDSCAPES ISSUE #08
June 25, 2025I’m delighted to have contributed to issue #08 of the outstanding
magazine Desired Landscapes, created and edited in Athens by the
talented Natassa Pappa, with a photo essay on Tirana. This piece invites
readers to discover a lesser-known side of the city at the crossroads
of East and West, in the heart of Europe, through two complementary
perspectives: mine — intimate, grounded, and photographic — and
Natassa’s, who was experiencing Tirana for the first time through her
writing. Tirana emerges as a city both familiar and distant, caught
between history and modernity, vibrant, colorful, chaotic, yet fragile.
This issue also offers a chance to explore contributions from a
diverse group of artists, writers, architects, urban planners, graphic
designers, and historians, brought together in a beautifully curated
edition crafted with curiosity, intelligence, and a genuine openness to
urban narratives from across the world.
In this issue, the image is removed. This is the issue of being present.
We walk in cities with no postcards, only to collect postcards from home.
We close our eyes to move our bodies through dense tourism and rising
floods. We drive through the past, holding on to occult rituals to stay rooted.
We taste the city on the go, misled by its disguised façades and concealed
staircases. We bring home wild plants, only to forget them, and choose to
live beside volcanoes despite the risk. We switch off the lights to walk
under the stars, and to hear the echoes of suppressed rivers. In this issue,
we sense all kinds of flows.
This is the issue of cities as energies.
Issue 08 will take you to TIRANA – ATHENS – MUSCAT – LISBON –
BENIDORM – MADRID – NEW YORK CITY – NAPLES – ISTANBUL –
VALLETTA – PARIS – OAXACA – YEREVAN, with a city guide on VENICE.
COME WANDER WITH US!
- Cities of texture - by Konstantinos Pittas
- City Without a Postcard - by Mariana Kostandini, Tirana
- Point Supreme - Interviewed by Natassa Pappa, Athens
- Discordant Currents - by Katerina Zachou, Venice
- Nostalgia Reimagined - by Corina Lozovan, Muscat
- Wild and Ever-Rewilding - by Ruby Conway, Lisbon
- A Story of a Staircase - by Laura DeL Pino, Benidorm
- People’s Trust - by Michael Vahrenwald, New York City
- he Volcanic Reign - by Katia Naouri, Naples
- Occult Topographies - by Ermina Apostolaki, Istanbul
- Interconnections - by Nectarios Stamatopoulos, Valetta
- Cities of Lights - by Nitin Bathla, Paris
- Echoes of Ilissos River - Leonidas Oikonomou interviewed by Natassa Pappa, Athens
- Gridlines and Food Stalls - by Mark Bessoudo, Oaxaca
- Emigrant Formations - by Miguel Núñez, Yerevan
