Career
He lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. Stanko Abadžić began his professional career in photography as a photojournalist for the Croatian daily newspaper Vjesnik. During that period he made well-known reportages from Tunisia, Malta, Turkey and other countries.
After the onset of the Croatian war of independence in 1991, Abadžić moved abroad and would not return to Croatia for many years.
After four years in Germany, he spent seven years in the Czechoslovakian Republic in Prague, a city which had the greatest impact on his artistic expression. At this point in his career he moved away from photojournalism towards art photography.
In the Czechoslovakian Republic he participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, the largest of which was a retrospective exhibition at the gallery Dom Jozefa Sudka in Prague, on which occasion his first monograph U ogledalu života (In The Mirror of Life) was published. In 2002 he returned to Croatia and the Croatian photography scene with a large exhibition at the Mimara Museum, where he exhibited In Absentia, his most famous series from Prague.
The artist also cites the influence of old masters of photography like Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Abadžić has had solo exhibitions in numerous European countries: the Czechoslovakian Republic, Croatia, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain, to name a few. He has also exhibited outside of Europe in Argentina, the United States of America and Japan. He has received professional recognition as well as many awards for his work.
Abadžić’s photographs are part of collections at the Modern Gallery, Zagreb and the Modern Gallery, Rijeka, Croatia, the Umelecko-průmyslová Museum in Prague, the Czechoslovakian Republic, the John Cleary Gallery in Houston, United States of America, the Verve Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America,the Stockeregg gallery, Switzerland, Kazutami Ando, Tokyo, Japan, as well as in other private and public collections.
