engleski

A Midterm Plan – Petar Dabac and His Initiative of Establishing a National Museum of Photography

In 1986, a renowned Zagreb photographer and culture worker Petar Dabac published a paper on the need of establishing a national museum of photography in Zagreb, emphasising that society will only be able to think about the future of photography once “we have preserved its most significant achievements from destruction”. This initiative was a result of his then 16-year-long experience in managing a photographic studio and an archive, but also of a tight connection with the Styrian photographic scene, especially Camera Austria and Forum Stadtpark. This paper will present Dabac’s initiative of establishing a national museum of photography, a proposal made in a specific period of the 80s, shedding light on the circumstances and the international network of knowledge and experience that preceded it. It will also pose a question of the museum’s importance today, especially while having in mind that the Dabac studio, first under Tošo, then under Petar Dabac, actively shaped the Yugoslav and Croatian photographic scene for more than half a century and that the question of artistic, historical, sociological and epistemological importance of photographic estates as well as the question of the physical condition of photographic material and its safekeeping is still unresolved in today’s Croatia.

museum of photography ; photography ; photographic estates

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