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Recollection and Memory: Photographic Diary Liber Pero and Remembering the Early 1990s from Croatia

The announcement of the end of history, was in the case of socialist Yugoslavia met with a multitude of historical breaks. As we know, the history of course didn’t end, but what was put in motion was a profound change of our own perception of places and histories, beliefs and memories. The dissolution of Yugoslavia had started already in the 1980s, but it was not before the early 1990s that the slow decay turned into spiral of ethno-nationalistic surges and a violent war. The situation of course dictated a profound change of attitudes – yesterday’s comrades in a multi-ethnic socialist country became others, strangers on the other side of the border (that was now separating newly emerged democratic nationalist states). Photographer Petar Dabac started his artistic career in the late 1960s and was part of the innovative artistic circle that challenged modernist canons and revolutionised arts. This circle transcended Yugoslav borders – connections with artists throughout Europe were flourishing, with them traveling and discussing, creating networks that enabled exchange of ideas and views. In his gallery in Zagreb, during the 1980s he managed to show photographers from both Yugoslavia and abroad. As the contours of the familiar started to dissolve in the late 1980s, he began creating a photo diary. What started as an almost compulsory taking of photographs without any artistic intention or design, turned into a meticulous visual record of the change that was happening on a profound personal level. How does this immense body of work that he created, the Lieber Pero diary, resonate with the historical events that occurred in the early 1990s Croatia and beyond and how does it fit into the way in which we remember the 1990s? How can a personal story reflect changes on a greater scale? Through reading layers sedimented in his archive, this paper will ask: can the personal and individual challenge the official and in what ways do the “misfits” in art contribute to our memory of the past today?

Memory ; photography ; photo diary ; 90s Croatia

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