For a long time, Zrinka Buljević’s commitment to archaeology, academic research and professional obligations kept her from holding solo exhibitions of her photographic work. She, however, never neglected photography.
When tracing the roots of her spiritual disposition, and consequently her visual expression, the figure of her father, the distinguished Split photographer and writer Zvonimir Buljević, cannot be overlooked. Although Zvonimir and Zrinka Buljević appeared over the years in several group exhibitions organised by the aforementioned Photo Club Split, their only joint exhibition was held in December 2003 at the Museum of Fine Arts. In January 2005, towards the end of Zvonimir’s life, it was also presented at the Matica Hrvatska Gallery in Zagreb.
Two decades after presenting their work together, father and daughter have once again become the focus of the same institution’s programme. Zvonimir Buljević’s monographic exhibition, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in October 2024, offered a retrospective survey of his oeuvre, while Zrinka’s current presentation introduces a new perspective and marks a departure from the dialogue established in earlier work.
The fortunate occasion of the artist’s return to the Museum of Fine Arts is further enhanced by a fitting anniversary – exactly four decades since her first solo exhibition at the Photo Club Split. Whereas her early, analogue work was dominated by the traditional camera and black-and-white photography, for the past fifteen or so years she has largely embraced the digital medium of the new era. In her hands, the mobile phone is no longer simply a practical tool of everyday life; it becomes a discreet and constant companion, recording in colour fleeting visual fragments from her immediate surroundings – “usputnice” (“asides”), as she herself likes to call them.
The selected photographs were taken in her native Split and in Bol on the island of Brač, a perennial refuge since childhood. They reflect the uninterrupted rhythm of life between everyday existence in Split and Bol as an occasional retreat, permanently preserved in a photographic diary accumulated over many years. Linked to the distinctive atmosphere of each setting, the photographs have no descriptive titles; instead, they are identified solely by the location and the month and year in which they were taken. The only exception is the portraits, which are identified by the names of the sitters.
Created between the summer of 2011 and the summer of 2026, the selection is bound together by a shared emotional thread and an underlying sense of intimacy. Rather than simply seeking photogenic views or the visual appeal of architectural monuments, her interest is focused primarily on the interaction between the built and natural environments. In her search for a visual dialogue between different structures, she finds it in the juxtaposition of solid architecture and atmospheric shifts, as well as in the interplay between street lighting and the darkness of night.
Considered as a whole, the photographs record both the presence and absence of people, who appear either as active protagonists of the captured moment or as markers of scale within the environments in which they appear.
Despite the strict visual discipline that governs her approach, her oeuvre retains the wit and casual spontaneity of street photography. Zrinka has an instinctive eye for the strange and surreal situations staged by everyday life.
The desire to preserve people worthy of remembrance in photographs has long been an inner imperative for the photographer, taking on a somewhat different character in her native city. Unlike the relaxed summer images from Bol, the Split portraits offer a different vision, shaped by the more formal circumstances in which the moments were encountered. As a final, reflective point in the present exhibition, the artist’s digitally altered likeness comes to the fore. Depicting herself in a room filled with books and paintings, she deliberately goes beyond the documentary function of the face, seeking to synthesise her personal and intellectual world within a single frame.
Whether she is photographing people, exploring architecture or capturing an incidental street scene, she always approaches the photographic act as a space for mutual dialogue. The remarkable breadth of motifs brought together in this exhibition brings documentary immediacy into dialogue with poetic depth, with the works at times reaching beyond established genre conventions. They demonstrate with striking clarity that compelling photography is not a matter of expensive technical equipment but of the photographer’s inner capacity to breathe vitality into an encountered scene and grant it enduring life. These works attest to Zrinka Buljević’s considerable creative maturity, while retaining her distinctive ability to balance rigorous formal order with an authentic sense of atmosphere. Hers is an exceptional eye for observation, capable of discovering hidden poetry and harmony even in the fleeting, everyday flashes of time.
Zrinka Buljević was born in Split in 1969. She is a prominent archaeologist and museum adviser at the Archaeological Museum in Split. At the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, she obtained a Master of Science degree in 1999, followed by a PhD in 2016. She has written around seventy research and professional papers on archaeology. Years of devoted research into ancient glass culminated in her landmark monograph Salona ex vitro: Salonitan Glassware, presented in April 2026. Her research and professional achievements have gone hand in hand with a successful term as director of the Archaeological Museum in Split, a post she held from 2004 to 2013.
Alongside her academic work, Zrinka Buljević has maintained an active practice in photography since 1986, when she joined the Photo Club Split. In the same year, the Club organised her first solo photography exhibition (Images of Summer ‘86), and in 1987 she received a silver plaque for a collection presented at the 19th Municipal Photography Exhibition, held at the same venue. She has staged several solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. Of particular note were the highly successful photography exhibition Discovering the Secret of the Temple (Ave Narona) of 1996, which travelled to numerous venues, and the authorial project Imprints of Empresses, realised in the same year, in which she also contributed as co-author of photographs of the hairstyles of Roman empresses. Both projects were undertaken under the auspices of the Archaeological Museum in Split.
Her engagement with the Photo Club Split extended to both organisational and publishing activities. Between 2001 and 2009, she was a member of the Club’s Executive Committee. She contributed a history of the Club to the catalogue Photo Club Split: Opening of the Photography Exhibition 2001 (2001), and co-edited, with Ante Verzotti, the substantial Photomonograph of the Photo Club Split (2004), which begins with her introductory essay. Her theoretical work also includes the forewords she wrote for the catalogues of the photography exhibitions Antaeus Cycle by Ivan Marović (2007) and Return by Ivica Bošnjak (2007).
A number of distinguished scholars and cultural figures, including Academician Tonko Maroević, Gordana Benić, Jasminka Babić and Branka Hlevnjak, have written about Zrinka Buljević’s distinctive photographic oeuvre.
The exhibition remains open until November 29, 2026.
The exhibition has been made possible with the financial support of the City of Split and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.