1 September 1965–17 May 2022

Srđan Vrančić died suddenly on 17 May 2022 while on assignment near the island of Molunt. His life motto was “diving is a must”.

He was born in 1965 in Rijeka, Croatia. He began to actively engage in photography in 1979 and published his first works in the early 80s in the youth newspaper “Val”, where he later worked as a photography editor. The award-winning photojournalist, journalist and editor stood out for his war reportage and underwater photography.

As a journalist-photojournalist working for parent companies and guesting in various newsrooms, Vrančić visited many hotspots of social turmoil, recording human drama and fate with lens and pen, he reported on all important political events and wars in Afghanistan, Serbia-Kosovo, Libya, Lebanon-Syria, Crimea, and most recently the war in Ukraine. However, the series of works with the theme of the Homeland War is particularly significant. His photographs, for which he received a large number of awards, were exhibited in numerous museums, including the Rijeka City Museum, the War Photography Museum in Zagreb and the Croatian School Museum.

He has been engaged in underwater photography for the past three decades, and he also had an active sports role in the Croatian Scuba Diving Federation. He conceived and launched the Scuba Scanner project, as part of which he dived and photographed the Adriatic seabed. He participated in numerous international competitions in underwater photography and received awards and recognitions.

In addition to the Adriatic, he also dived in the Red Sea, the Caribbean, Thailand and Mexico. He was also happy to respond to environmental clean-up campaigns and had an extremely developed awareness of environmental protection. He was awarded the Velebitska degenija award (2020) for underwater ecological photos and reports, as well as the award for the best sports photos of the Croatian Press Photographers Association (2014). Vrančić was posthumously awarded the Velebitska degenija award for a series of reports as part of the Scuba Scanner project.

He organized about twenty solo exhibitions and participated in dozens of group exhibitions. Over the years, the number of newspapers in which he published his works grew to hundreds. He also collaborated in publishing many books, and as a freelancer, he worked with all relevant newsrooms in the country.

“Underwater is one of the few COVID-free zones on our planet. The feeling of freedom under the sea is perhaps the most similar to the feeling that astronauts have in space” – Srđan Vrančić The Crow