A Pole, Paweł Jaroszewski, gave the Stari Grad Town his heart and album!
Mirko Crnčević
SLOBODNA DALMACIJA
In the garden of the Biankini Palace, many admirers of the cultural life of Stary Grad - Faros - were officially presented with the album of the famous Polish photographer, Paweł Jaroszewski, entitled "Stari Grad Dusk to Daybreak. Paweł Jaroszewski has been an artist dealing with photography for over 25 years, and at the same time has extensive experience in publishing and internet projects. It is interesting that in his publications he combines photographs of landscapes, architecture and reportage with historical narration and personal reflections.
“I have been working on this publishing project since 2018, when an exhibition of my black and white photographs under the same title was held at the Stratiko gallery of the Dominican monastery in Stari Grad. Over the next few months, I continued my photographic recording of the city, and at my request, the late Academician Tonko Maroević, just two months before his death, wrote the introduction to this album. That is why I dedicated the book to this magician of Croatian culture, an incomparable Croatian art and literature critic, but also to all my friends from the oldest city in the lands of the Republic of Croatia - a place where I have been coming for over two decades, where I really experienced only good things and left my heart there ”- said Jaroszewski very emotionally.
During the promotion, Aldo Čavić, director of the Stary Grad Museum, talked about the book and the author, and in the Biankini garden, the aforementioned exhibition was shown. It must also be said that Pawel is clearly fascinated by the culture, architecture and landscapes of Dalmatia, especially the ancient Faros and the island of Hvar. How much he is in love with the aforementioned climate is best evidenced by the fact that in the famous Greek field of "Faroska hora" there is his small piece of land with literally three olive trees, so his Croatian friends joke that he is in fact "the largest olive grower - in Poland ". Previously, he published his own photo albums "Stari Grad in miniature", "Churches and chapels of Stariy Grad" and "Discovering Hvar", and several prominent Croatian authors gave these publications their "seal".
Among them, for example, apart from Čavić and Maroević, there are also: Nikola Bižaca, Josip Franulić, Ivica Huljev, Tomislav Raukar, Vinko Ružević, Vinko Tarbušković, Ambroz Tudor. The album was summed up in its text by the late Tonko Maroević: "... Stari Grad can be photogenic and is a suitable motive for filming, painting, dreaming, and there are many visual, painted and even film presentations and interpretations, but there are few that, like in Paweł Jaroszewski's work, managed to convey its whole and show it to the explorer's amazement. And we also have reasons to be amazed at the result, to see our city as a miracle, and to be grateful to it for the experience.
Mirko Crnčević
SLOBODNA DALMACIJA