The Beauty of Croatia

Tješimir Marić, born in Oklaj in 1939, seems to confirm the truth that you sometimes have to go around the world to get home. After working as a television cameraman, after impressions from picturesque New York, from the lakes of Canada and cliffs of Normandy, vistas of Paris, Moroccan villages made of mud, the volcanic formations of the Canary Islands, Icelandic geysers, the open sea of the Atlantic, exotic Yemen and unique Socotra, at last he could direct the lens of his camera to the domestic landscape. Over four decades he photographed on the whole landscapes, immortalising them first of all in highly appreciated picture postcards and calendars and now with this very worthwhile book.
In a long-ago talk with a respected expert in garden and landscape architecture, to my question what park, garden or gardens on his world tours had most fascinated him, against my expectation that he would describe some distant and exotic areas, he replied with a grin “Croatia!” Croatia, with really slight shifts of land, water or air, offers the eye and heart sights that are ever new: majestic mountains, limpid rivers, fields and vineyards, castles, burgs and intimate squares, emerald lakes and lavish cascades, lonely lighthouses, plants that bloom just here and nowhere else in the world.
An encounter with the material and intangible beauties of Croatia is like unwrapping a gift packed with love in many layers that after each layer reveals ever new surprises. This is a deed of gift written with the calligraphy of nature and history, the treasury of biological diversity, of national parks, reserves, cultural monuments and treasures many of which are placed upon the list of the greatest precious places of the world heritage.
In the service of this noble activity, this book of photographs was created over a long period of years.
Vlasta Kulier