I am very pleased and honored to present to you the photography exhibition by Tonči Staničić, “Miniatures of the Adriatic.” Tonči is a career Croatian diplomat who, as a hobby, but also with great talent and remarkable success, devotes himself to photography.
For this occasion, at the Gallery of Hani i 2 Robertëve, he chose to exhibit motifs from one of the most beautiful seas on the planet, the Adriatic. He selected around fifty evocative photographs from everyday life in Split, his hometown, as well as from the coastal settlements and the famous islands of Dalmatia.
I believe you will agree that our gallery tonight is filled with scenes of paradise. These photographs reveal to us how beautiful our planet is, and how, at the same time, it is terribly, painfully, irresistibly, uniquely, and in a sublime way, magical.
I felt the need to list all these epithets because of the situation in which our world finds itself today, in the conditions of the current global political and economic crisis and the succession of ongoing wars.
Today we are all facing an existential danger. There are serious voices warning that perhaps the Third World War has already begun. There are also voices that prophesy a cataclysm, a nuclear war that would destroy life on Earth.
I know that we are in danger, but I do not want to believe these dark prophecies. This is why this exhibition seems to me like a desperate appeal and prayer, that the darkness may not prevail, that no cataclysm may occur.
Nuk jam fetar, por do të doja që bukuria që shohim te këto fotografi të na ruajë, dhe që bota të shpëtohet; që arsyeja të mbizotërojë mbi të keqen dhe marrëzinë e mujësharëve që, nga dëshira për të sunduar botën, të mos e lejojnë shkatërrimin e saj.
Let the darkness vanish!
Shkëlzen Maliqi
Philosopher, art critic, political analyst
