A PORTRAIT OF THE PHOTO-DOCUMENTARIST AND ARTIST

Ćiril Ćiro Raič was born on 3rd September 193G on the banks of the blue-eyed beauty Neretva, in the village of Strgonice, municipality of Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by father Mate and mother Anđa (nee Stanić). He finished primary school in Ostrožac. After that, in 1952, he went to Mostar and joined the photo club "Salko Šestić”. He learned the photographic craft at the Photo Centre in that city. Having completed the craft in 1955, he became a photographer in the service of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Monuments in Mostar, where he still works.

In 1975 he was conferred the title of master of artistic photography, and became member of Applied Artists' Association of BaH and former Yugoslavia. In his 45 years long career as photographer and artist, he has exhibited at about 250 group exhibitions and 61 independent exhibitions. He has also prepared 196 thematic independent exhibitions both home and abroad.

For the results achieved in his profession he has been awarded a large number of acknowledgements, diplomas and plaques, among which are: Plaque of the City of Mostar (1984), Jubilee Diploma with Plaque of Conservationists' of Yugoslavia (1975), Acknowledgement of the Town of Livno(1985), Order of Labour with Silver Wreath (1986) and a number of other credits and acknowledgements.

The name of the author of this photo-mono-graph, Ćiril Ćiro Raič, has long been known to many lovers of quality photography and fine arts, as well as to many scientists, researchers of our past, tourist workers, and many others.

The long-time career and photographic work of Ćiril Raič may be divided into several creative periods. The first period is similar to a majority of photographers when they start getting to know the camera and its possibilities. In the second period, after having become familiar with wider possibilities and photo-expressive tools of solid modern photo-technique, he was gradually maturing into an excellent photographic documentarist of cultural, historical and natural heritage.

With the extension of the activity of the Regional Institute for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Monuments of the greater Herzegovina area, Ćiro's specific activity of a photographic documentarist also widens. By a systematic expert methodology, one formed and further developed a photograph library of cultural and natural monuments, and of all sights from the greater Herzegovina area.

The subject matter of motifs and monument types in this photo-monograph is rich, heterogeneous and comprehensive. It covers a long time span from pre-history up to our times.

For easier reference the photo-monograph is divided into several larger or smaller thematic wholes, each represented only by the most characteristic examples and quality photos out of the author's rich opus.

The monograph opens with prehistoric motifs (caves of the pre-historic man), passes to the Illyrian hill forts and cairns, and continues with Roman archeologic remains and finds, early Christian basilicas, medieval fortified towns and stećci as unique kind of medieval tombstones characteristic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There follow cultural and historic monuments from the Ottoman period in all their forms, Christian architecture, and art from Turkish and post Turkish times.

The Austro-Hungarian period is represented by a number of architectonic, housing, public and sacral buildings, and urban wholes.

Raič as photographer was attracted by other motifs as well: people, nature, everyday life and the atmosphere in towns and villages of this picturesque and interesting Herzegovina he has been touring all over for years.

Photo portraits of Herzegovinian highlanders, women and sturdy girls in national costumes, which had already become part of our ethnographic cultural heritage, are a segment of the time past whose remains are kept only in museums now.

To this group of motifs also belong rare specimens of ancient mountain houses and stables on summer pastures in the lee of mountain tops, which remind us of times gone by.

It is impossible to list all kinds of the activities of this outstanding master of photography in his long-time career. Ćiro has had a successful co-operation with our renowned and prominent scientists, experts for the monuments he photographed. Besides, as a photographic documentarist, he cooperated in realising many scientific and research projects of local,. regional and national importance. Some of these are specified in a special part of this enclosure.

Ćiro Raič has made a huge contribution in photographic material to a large number of various monographs, photo-monographs, annuals, anthologies, calendars, jubilee editions of cultural and other institutions. He also illustrated many catalogues, and some well-known literary and scientific works are illustrated by his photographs.

Thanks to the quality of his works and numerous interesting motifs Raič was engaged in quite a number of publishing projects of the famous library "Cultural Heritage of BaH”. In addition, he was contributor to a number of scientific and research institutions, such as: Academy of Sciences and Arts BaH, National Museum Sarajevo, Institute for the Protection Cultural Monuments BaH, Encyclopaedia BaH, Institute of the Architectonic and Urban Planning Faculty in Sarajevo, Art Gallery in Mostar, and others. His tourist motifs with the theme of cultural and natural monuments, as well as his picture postcards, attracted much attention at many exhibitions home and abroad The tourist promotion poster by Ćiro Raič, presenting the Old Bridge and the old Mostar, was an outstanding example of a promoting photo of the Tourist Union BaH in 1983.

Ćiro Raič also registered with his camera our most recent history of the 1992-1995 war period with all its destructive consequences, but the author decided not to include the photographs dealing with this period. Let it only be noted here that in the recent years Raič has had several exhibitions of war photography. It is also his photographs that illustrate the famous catalogue called "Mostar 1992 - Urbicide", a soul stirring document of Serbian destruction of Mostar.

One of the lovers of Ćiro š photographs, at one of many exhibitions of his, wrote long ago: "Raič is not a poet, or a historian, or a day-dreamer, but this inspired master of photography seems to bear in himself all the three: poetry, and history, and day dreaming, for he manages to perpetuate beauty and bestow it upon our eye. He went everywhere and reached everywhere, photographing and "catching" motifs, all of him in the play of imperishable moments and picturesque landscapes of this country. Every motif and detail is an exceptional experience which strongly binds the attention of the observer. "

If it had not been for the keen eye and camera of Ćiro Raič with which he photographed almost every nook and cranny of Herzegovina and partly of Bosnia, many would never know that this region is so rich in numberless and versatile motifs, which we have been discovering for decades and are still discovering in his exhibitions. Now we are doing it through this comprehensive photo-monograph "Herzegovina" - a work rarely published even in larger cultural centres.