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.

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