Our Daily Bread

The photograph Our Daily Bread is a paradigmatic pattern of the manner of the Zagreb School and at the same time the finest example of poetic realism in Croatian photography. It shows the consistence of the artist as theoretician in his own works as well. August Frajtić (Bileća, 1902 – Buenos Aires, 1977) was a prominent organiser of the Zagreb amateur photographer movement and an art photographer. He went to secondary school in Zagreb and Karlovac, where he graduated in 1919. In 1945 he left for Italy and then to Buenos Aires, staying there for the rest of his life. In 1932 he began to write programmatic articles in the specialised amateur photography press. In February 1933, with a group of young amateur photographers, he started the reorganisation of Fotoklub Zagreb, with the intention of creating a strong amateur photo organisation. At the first International Amateur Photography Congress in Vienna in 1938 he was elected vice-president of the newly founded International Amateur Photography Union. In 1940 he founded and edited the magazine Savremena fotografija (Contemporary Photography), the journal of Fotoklub Zagreb. He was active in exhibition circles from 1932 to 1944. He was the intellectual leader and educator behind the initiating of common work to find out and create a national style in art photography.