On Tuesday, May 11, the Croatian Museum of Tourism in Opatija opened the exhibition “Opatija Album of Tošo Dabac”, which exhibits Dabac’s photographic impressions of Opatija and Kvarner. Dabac reveals the poetics of the place and the spirit of the time, saying that our region has a significant place in Dabac’s striking artistic heritage. The author of the exhibition and catalog is the director of the Croatian Museum of Tourism Mirjana Kos.

In the 1950s, a slight growth of the tourist economy began. At that time, Tošo Dabac was cooperating with the state-owned company Jugoslavenska knjiga to “officially travel to Istria, Primorje and Dalmatia to film tourist centers and workers’ homes.” The Opatija Tourist Association, today’s Tourist Board of the city of Opatija, ambitiously uses Dabac’s photographs for its needs, so the Opatija album was in their archives. In 2019, the album was taken over by the Croatian Museum of Tourism. The Opatija album mainly contains photographs of Opatija and its surroundings, Pula, Rab, etc., and motifs related to folklore.

Tošo Dabac was born on May 18, 1907 in Nova Rača near Bjelovar. He is considered a representative of the social direction in Croatian photography and one of the founders of the so-called schools of Zagreb art photography. He captures the life of the street, ordinary people, beggars … (cycle of photographs People from the Street, 1932 – 1935). Tošo Dabac died in Zagreb on May 9, 1970. His legacy is kept in the Tošo Dabac Archive at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.