Concresco by David Galjaard was awarded the 2012 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award for a first book. An exhibition of the 30 shortlisted books in twocategories [general and first book], featuring the winners, continues at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore through January 24.

In his summary of the book, Galjaard writes, “Fearing an attack from abroad, Albanian Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha had around 750,000 above-ground bunkers built during his time in power, from 1945 until his death in 1985. This amounts to one bunker per four Albanians, in a country the size of Belgium. Although built for protection, they proved counterproductive in that they merely helped to create more fear in the utterly isolated population. After the collapse of communism in 1991, the virtually indestructible bunkers were deprived of their unfulfilled purpose, serving purely as an obtrusive reminder of a dictatorship that had had lasted for almost fifty years.

“Today their massed presence seems mainly to impress foreigners, while Albanians themselves prefer to look to the future. The country’s admission to NATO on 1 April 2009 is felt to be a first step towards joining the European Union. Although accession to the EU is expected to take at least another ten years, the population has a sense of being ready for it.

“In this documentary, the bunkers are used as a visual metaphor in the telling of a larger social story. They help to paint a picture of developments in a country that was the last in Europe to renounce communism and has set out on a demanding quest to become part of the capitalist West. The bunkers do not merely tell an absurd story about a xenophobic regime in a totalitarian past. The diverse uses they are put to today and the fact that more and more of them are disappearing – and how – also shows that what was until recently the poorest country in Europe is slowly but surely undergoing a profound change.”

The self-published book was designed by Katie McGonical and printed in an edition of 750, with a debossed linen cover and Swiss binding. Information. Read Thomas Bollier’s interview with David Galjaard here.

The Latin American Photobook exhibition also continues through January 24, with a Spanish-Language tour with Christopher Lopez on Saturday, January 12 at 2pm. Information. Free. Note: I went last Saturday and with few Spanish-speakers on deck, Mr. Lopes generously led the tour in English.

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore is located at 547 West 27^th Street, 4^th Floor, NY, NY.