A photographic project that delves into the spheres of identity and the preservation of memories of summer youth. For the last few years, I have been capturing the aesthetics of my Adriatic coast in my photos, a feeling that arose from the summers I spent on various islands and places along the coast.
I was born in Osijek, the eastern part of Croatia, and my family comes from Baranja. Every summer vacation, we traveled to the Adriatic Sea; they loved that way of life. This is the greatest love for them, even today. The experiences you often go through as a child remain a part of you forever but are somehow stronger when you become aware of them in more mature years. These are the impressions that summer and vacation left on my youth. Hotel complexes still smell the same as in the Yugoslavian era. The smell of fresh fish on the waterfront, pine trees and fresh fruit, and the ferry's interior. These are photographs through which nostalgia lives.
Man changes over the years, and everything around him, but the sea seems to remain the same; only for you, it means something else. As a child, I left all my energy in the sea while jumping off piers and diving underwater. Now, the Adriatic Sea means something else to me. Now I come there to talk to him and let all the bad thoughts and feelings into the water so the sea takes them somewhere far away.
The Adriatic Sea was an escape for my late grandmother and my mother during the Croatian Homeland War. After that, the Adriatic became my family's only place for an annual vacation. At one point, you think the sea has countless meanings for you. It is one big surface area to which you often say "Nevermore," and then you return to it again. The days of the Adriatic are one of the most beautiful days of my youth, and that's why I still love to swim far in that blue.