Dabac’s ouvre of his photographic journeys along the Adriatic coast are the central theme of the exhibition Tošo Dabac: Adriatic Travelogue, the outcome of a museum cooperation between the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, that manages The Tošo Dabac Archive, property of the City of Zagreb, and the Croatian Museum of Tourism in Opatija. Tošo Dabac’s photographic oeuvre encompasses a wide thematic span from portraits, artworks and cultural heritage to landscapes, folklore and scenes of city life. Apart from their high artistic quality, they are also significant for their documentary value. 

Photographs displayed at the exhibition were made in the period between 1950 and 1970, when Dabac visited the Adriatic coast and its towns, documenting the beauties of nature, cultural monuments of the Croatian coast and tourist resorts. They were created during his professional engagement for the Yugoslavia Tourist Federation and the commissions for the visual design of the magazine Jugoslavija, a richly illustrated publication dealing with a wide spectrum of important themes in the state, from art and tourism up to science.

Although Tošo Dabac’s postwar oeuvre has already been viewed through local segments (as for instance Rijeka Diary, Istra Diary, Friends of the Sea: black-and-white Photography of the 1960s and Tošo Dabac’s Opatija Album), the specificity of the current exhibition, that is, this selection of Dabac’s works, is to perceive the Adriatic as a whole in the natural and cultural sense, within the frame of the Croatian coast.   
Photographs chosen for the exhibition presents a selection of photographs of maritime landscapes, coastal lanes and squares, walks by the sea, travellers and tourists, local inhabitants, workers taking a break, peasants and fishermen, ships and sailboats and of numerous cultural and historical monuments, too. Noting with his photographs, Dabac pays equal attention to people and architecture, to work and free time, to the spectacular and daily.

Shots taken from an elevated perspective, almost from the bird’s eye view, represent a special visual dimension. Such views enable distancing, yet a clear reading of space as well, emphasizing its structures, rhythms and courses. In such scenes people appear as parts of a broader complex, embedded into lanes, waterfronts, beaches and landscapes, not losing their individuality in the process. At the same time, Dabac shows an exceptional feeling for details: gestures, looks, body postures, relationships between light and shade, traces of used space. It is these seemingly tiny details that provide emotional depth to these scenes, turning a document into an ambience holder. 

The exhibition Tošo Dabac: Adriatic Travelogue does not offer obvious readings, but it opens up just like a journey. In this context the journey is not conducted as a mere act of arrival or passage, but rather as a series of lingerings, detachments and reapproaches. Dabac’s travel on the Adriatic is likewise a photographer’s journey of one who observes, pauses and logs what emerges before him.  

The journey, as one of the key thematic hubs of the exhibition, is manifested in a number of levels. It is simultaneously concrete and metaphorical – a voyage by ship or car, the arrival of tourists, the season of migrations, but also an inner, peaceful, almost meditative observing of space and people through time and scenery. Patiently Dabac records not only destinations, but processes as well – moments of arrivals, lingerings and passages; the rhythm of daily life in midspace. 

The Adriatic Travelogue is not solely a visual record, but an invitation to observe the space, movements and relationships between people and landscapes – the way Tošo Dabac was patiently and delicately documenting them with the lens of his camera. 
Thus Dabac’s Adriatic appears open and permeable, as a life space, without clear borders between the local life and the outer arrivals, between work and rest, between natural and constructed.  Within this context, the exhibition can be interpreted as a subtle commentary of today’s reality marked by strong urbanization, commercialization and devastation of the coast under the pressure of the capital and a rapid development of mass tourism. The space in Dabac’s photographs which are places of meetings, dwellings and daily life, are nowadays often restricted to resources and backdrops, subordinate to seasonality and market interests. These photographs do not offer straightforward criticism, but in their very peacefulness and restraint they open a space for contemplation on lost relationships and possibly different futures. 

Organizer: Croatian Museum of Tourism
Co-organizer: Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art
Author of the concept & exhibition curator: Bella Rupena
Exhibition associates: Nataša Ivančević
Curator’s assistant: Kristian Volarić
Language editing and proofreading: Dijana Stanić-Rešicki
Translation: Sabina Kaštelančić
Graphic design and layout: Wanda design
Digitalization and photo editing: Davor Zupičić
Photo printing: B – Nula Studio
Visual set-up: Lada Sega
Technical set-up: Ranko Puž, Tanja Gvozdić
Media promotion: Ivan Modrić