Photographs reveal Dubrovnik’s hidden places, then and 30 years later

Mara Bratoš’s photographs look past Dubrovnik’s postcard image to places marked by silence, abandonment and change. Her exhibition “Hidden Places of the City” moves from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, where it opens at Galerija Karas on Sept. 9.

The first photographs date from 1995, soon after the Croatian War of Independence. Dubrovnik still carried visible signs of destruction, while former meeting places, leisure spots and entertainment venues stood empty or neglected. Bratoš, then a student at Zagreb’s Film Academy, focused on locations familiar to residents but difficult for visitors to place on the city’s map.

Her black-and-white images present sites such as Villa Šeherezada, Hotel Argentina, Lapad Bay, the Porporela water-polo court and table-tennis tables outside Hotel Neptun as silent, almost cinematic settings. The exhibition’s description links their mood to a sense of uncertainty and unease in which ordinary spaces appear to hold untold stories.

Thirty years later, Bratoš returned to the same locations. The return exposed a new barrier: some places could no longer be entered. She could not access Hotel Argentina or Villa Šeherezada, photographing only the latter’s entrance. The reasons are left open, but the absence of access becomes part of the work. The 2025 photographs are not repetitions of the 1995 images. They record how the locations and their place in Dubrovnik’s shared social experience have changed.