Hotel
Libertas, 2002
photos
by Kael Alford
This series
documents the remains of what was once a posh state-owned hotel and
popular tourist destination in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Built in the 1980's,
the Hotel Libertas was a swank monument to the business and pleasure
of the socialist leisure industry, however, like so many other buildings
across the former Yugoslavia, when war began, the hotel sustained severe
shelling and the subsequent years of political turmoil left the building
in ruins. After the war ended, as the economy of newly independent Croatia
shifted and state assets became privatized, the tourists began to come
back, but the hotel never did. It stands now as a decaying icon of the
early 1980's Yugoslav modernist aesthetic and an era of prosperity and
peace.