Just back from a whirlwind trip to Zagreb, where I spent about a year and a half as a student back in 1982-1984. I’ve wanted to go back ever since then, but life and events somehow conspired against it, and I think I have also always been slightly afraid of spoiling the magic of memory. Then, a week ago, I took my courage and my credit card in both hands and bought a ticket so that I could finally lay some ghosts to rest, and awaken some others. In the intervening twenty two years, it’s the things I didn’t photograph that have remained the clearest and most vivid mental images. I couldn’t know, back then, what images I would cherish and yearn to see again, so my Zagreb gallery is an attempt to put some of this right. Some of the pictures are impressions of how Zagreb has changed since I was there, some try to capture the things that seem the same, and others – which might seem quite dull as pictures – are just aides-memoire for me, friends and fellow-students in far-flung places now, who only have to see a certain tree, or the light falling on a tramline in a certain way to feel that tug at the heart-strings.
