Elska Magazine‘s intrepid Editor and Chief Photographer, Liam Campbell, left his quiet village home in Wales to go to explore Kosovo and the southern Balkans, some 2000 miles away on the other side of Europe.   This was to be his 56th book in the Elska series, which has served to educate and inform us about gay communities scattered around the globe.  It.s a big world out there, but Elska has shown us over the past few years that we have much more in common with our queer brothers and sisters throughout the world than we may have ever guessed.

Campbell told Queeguru, “After ten and a half years of making Elska is cities all over the world, I realised that we had a big gap in the Balkans; we decided to fill that with Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, Europe’s youngest country. This is a fascinating place, so I knew we needed to do it justice by bringing in a second artist to collaborate. That’s Glasgow-based photographer Philip Mowbray, whose excellence in environmental photography adds a special touch to the issue, complementing Liam Campbell’s portraiture, particularly male nude photography.

“Beyond the collaboration, which is the first of its kind in Elska history, there are other unique aspects to this issue,” continues Campbell “First, Elska Pristina is the first in our series to have a multi-city arc, following the journey to Pristina with sojourns in Skopje, North Macedonia and Thessaloniki, Greece. Second, the storytelling is shared by four different authors — Liam Campbell, Philip Mowbray, Haki Haliti, and Macedonian poet Aleksandar Kochovski. Third, this is the first issue to feature analogue film work, providing a rough and real aesthetic that perfectly suits Balkan cityscapes.”

Inside Elska Pristina, readers are introduced to nine men from the LGBTQ+ community. Each has their own chapter containing a photoshoot of them in their city streets and in their homes, dressed in their own style as well as undressed. Their chapters also include a story, allowing readers to get to know them at an even deeper level. The result is a most authentic and revealing showcase of ordinary gay men from this under-visited part of the world.