Branko Balić
Authors
Sandra Križić Roban
Irena Šimić
Editor
Ana Šverko
Reviewers
Ivana Mance
Hrvoje Gržina
English translation
Marina Schumann
Croatian language editing
Dunja Aleraj Lončarić
Design and layout
studio bilić_müller
Digital processing
Irena Šimić
Filip Kartelo
Ivan Kuharić
Printing and binding
Sveučilišna tiskara d.o.o.
Print run
350
Publisher
Institute of Art History, 2022
Series
Photoarchives, Vol. 1
Material description
183 str.; ilustr.
ISBN 978-953-7875-91-6
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Cover image: Open warehouse of the Drvno industrijsko poduzeće Karlovac, around 1965, detail (Photo Archive Branko Balić, Institute of Art History, neg. BB-R-01339)
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From a review by Ivana Mance:
“The aesthetic quality of Balić’s work ranks him among the best Croatian photographers of his generation, not only among those primarily dedicated to documenting material cultural heritage (in Balić’s generation these include Nenad Gattin and Krešimir Tadić), but also as a strong personality in this field of creative production, like Marija Braut or Mladen Tudor. Furthermore, due to the wide range of subjects Balić focused upon as a photographer, his oeuvre provides an exemplary testimony to the social and cultural role of photography in general. The image of his time and the way it experienced itself were essentially determined by the eye of the camera, which was rarely just documentary and far more often, if not always, co-creative, implying a specific interpretation of what was seen. Finally, Balić’s photographic opus is an important historical source for researching the cultural, artistic, and social life of the period in which he was active (from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s), which is evident from the regular use of his photographs as visual material in various publications. The central text in this book by Sandra Križić Roban, an art historian whose scholarly research is dedicated (among other things) to the history of photography in Croatia and the theoretical aspects of the medium, deals with all of the above, while Irena Šimić’s text focuses on Balić’s legacy as an archival photographic resource.
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From a review by Hrvoje Gržina:
The book on Branko Balić is primarily intended for art and photography historians, but also for curators of art collections, and as such undoubtedly contributes to the assessment of Balić’s photographic oeuvre, adding many hitherto unknown elements to his biography and career overview. Considering that only one museum catalogue with texts by Milan Prelog and Tonko Maroević (Branko Balić 1930-1976: Photographs, Zagreb, 1978) and a short entry by Nada Grčević in the Croatian Biographical Lexicon (1983) has been published so far, as well as a television programme in the series on Photography in Croatia (2016), text by Sandra Križić Roban is certainly the most complete critical resource for further research and evaluation of Balić’s photographs and his legacy as a whole. Written clearly and interestingly, Branko Balić. A Close Reading offers the reader the most detailed insight into the photographer’s work to date. All analyses and interpretations of Balić’s photographs are verifiable in the included reproductions, as well as in the accurate and systematic critical apparatus in the form of footnotes.
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This book has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia, and City of Zagreb. This work has been supported in part by Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2019-04-1772.
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Price: 19,91 €