TIRANA, May 7 – The Albanian news agency (ATSH) and the General Directorate of Archives will open a joint photographic and documentary exhibition on May 9. The exhibition carries the title “ATSH – A Journey Through the History of Albanian News”.

The exhibition at Tirana Castle will feature images from Albania’s first transmission rooms in the 1920s, early radio stations and modern digital technology. Organisers say the material reflects the link between information, technological progress and the country’s political and social changes over time. Archive documents and photographs also trace the evolution of news production in Albania.

ATSH’s role in distributing information across different historical periods forms another central part of the exhibition. The display follows the transition from radio to television and from physical archives to digital platforms. It also explores the role of information in shaping social reality.

Photographers and reporters appear throughout the exhibition as direct witnesses to major moments in Albanian history. Another section focuses on Albania’s early connection to international information networks during the first decades of the 20th century. Special attention goes to the establishment of ATSH and its development into the country’s central news agency.

Figures such as Mihal Sherko, the agency’s first director, appear alongside some of Albania’s earliest journalists. Organisers present their work as part of broader efforts to build an organised national information system linked to international developments.

The exhibition also revisits the media transition of the 1990s through political pluralism, the rise of independent newspapers and changes in news production and distribution. Today ATSH cooperates with more than 35 international news agencies and media institutions, including AFP, ANSA, PA Media, DPA, EFE, Lusa and Anadolu Agency.

ATSH also holds full membership in European Newsroom, European Alliance of News Agencies, Alliance of Mediterranean News Agencies and Association of Balkan News Agencies – Southeast Europe.

One of ATSH’s main assets remains its photographic and documentary archive. The collection includes more than 300,000 photographs and film negatives dating from 1913 to the present day. The agency has also started digitising and indexing the material. Thousands of printed bulletins preserved since 1945 also form part of the archive.

/a.p./