Monika Bulaj

Filmmaker, Journalist, Photographer, Writer/Editor

Monika Bulaj is an accomplished photojournalist, reporter, documentary filmmaker, and educator based in Italy. Her work is distinguished by its focus on minorities at risk, faiths, and shared sacredness in regions spanning Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Bulaj's impactful projects have garnered prestigious awards and have been featured in renowned publications globally. She is currently engaged in creating a visual atlas that explores threatened minorities and shared holy places, challenging conventional narratives and highlighting the beauty and solidarity found in marginalized communities. Through her work, Bulaj sheds light on clandestine geographies, memories, and coexistences, offering a unique perspective on the complexities of religiosity, conflict, and human resilience in diverse landscapes.

places of uncertain identities, where the sacred can transcend borders

The direction of my work has changed over time. I began by documenting the minor and major religions that dwell in the shadows of yesterday’s and today’s wars and in the charred remains they leave behind. But as I carried on, it was my photographs that began to find me, to tell me about praying and dreaming, fire and water, memory and oblivion, the scarf and the dance, passion, possession and incarnation, the routes traveled by songs. And so what I do today is all simplicity. I retrieve the pieces of a shattered mirror, countless crumbs, bits that don’t fit together, bricks from the Tower of Babel. Perhaps a photographer can do no more than gather up the pieces of a mosaic that no one will ever finish, put them down the way she thinks is right (or perhaps the only way it can be done), as she continues to fantasize, in vain, about creating a picture of the world that is whole, that may exist somewhere or perhaps that existed somewhere once but is now lost, just like Adam’s language. I travel alone, for solitude devoid of filters or protections, is crucial to encounters. But I do have faithful travel companion: the hurry that I will be late. In the Middle East, Africa and Asia the richness of complexity is disappearing before our eyes, in lands where diverse peoples have cohabited and interacted for thousands of years, sharing saints, gestures, symbols, myths, songs and gods. I try to create a kind of visual atlas of threatened minorities and shared holy places, walking with the wandering peoples menaced by human folly. My work look for the beauty in the dark places of the world. For the solidarity of the oppressed. The cohabitation among the religious where there are bombs. For the cracks in the theories of the so-called clash of civilisations, when presidents, bandits and terrorists use the name of gods to make war.

Documentary filmmaking, Documentary photography, Human rights, Migration, Minority advocacy, Nomadism, Refugees, Reporter/Journalist, Storytelling, War

https://www.ted.com/talks/monika_bulaj_the_hidden_light_of_afghanistan