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There is nothing easier than a job that combines love of one’s homeland, heritage, photography and the cravat. Nothing is easier than turning back one’s gaze and stepping into the lives of some unknown people from the past, although at first sight it seems that they do not have any connection with us today.
At the same time, there is nothing more difficult than wiping away with a wave of the hand, like in a fairy story, the old dust, that in some cases has been settling for centuries, from the yellowed silky albums and go back to the time when those (today’s) memories were carefully gathered, recorded with love, with a sense perhaps even then of the important role of “memory” and testimonies of one’s time. It is not easy to bring to life the vastly different, slightly mystical world of our great-grandparents, sift through the interior of their starched drawers, soaked in lavender and moth balls, their hand-carved corner cupboards or their old, many layered chests, purchased somewhere in foreign climes.
But, we wipe the dust off the old photographs, and underneath we find precious, filigree gold, preserved in embroidered kerchiefs and robes, in numerous wardrobes in Imota, Split, Zagreb, and throughout Croatia and the world. But, above all, in our hearts.
There somehow, the living realities, captured in these photographs, come alive again in our hearts and our spirit, strong as pictures carved in stone. These photographs tell the stories of the men and women of Imotski, families and relationships over the centuries; stories that can sometimes make us laugh, sometimes make us cry, whilst in our intimate self we sense all that may be read from them. What was the man thinking about, who, before he stood before the camera, smoothed his hair, straightened his tie, stood up straight, or his wife, who, just before she had her picture taken took her scarf from her head and wound it round her neck, combed her hair, smiled uncertainly, with glassy eyes?! That woman is our mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. If we look carefully at those faces, we can almost “hear” the stories which we listened to hundreds of times as children, by the fire in the stove, about people from the rocks where today’s generations are also growing.
Taking photographs was then to create a “memory book” for children and grandchildren, far off relatives in America, or perhaps from them for their cousins there in Imota. Without these old photographs and letters, we would never have discovered what Auntie Milica looked like, or Granny’s Uncle Iko, or Marijan, we would never have had a glimpse of their “American” lives, although it was precisely they that here turned the earth we inherited. And along with the earth, we also inherited photographs, letters, newspaper cuttings, family customs and stories, suits, scarves, ties…
