Ivan Lalić, b. 1931-1996
Branka Lalić b. 1932
About The Project
This website is a collaborative project between Ana Lalić and her grandmother Branka Lalić, dedicated to preserving and sharing the intertwined history of their family and the poetry of Ivan V. Lalić (1931–1996).
Through scanned photographs, letters, and Branka’s recorded recollections, the project builds a visual and narrative archive of a family deeply rooted in art, literature, and music. Together, these components reveal the personal world behind Ivan’s poetry; his reflections on memory, time, loss, and love, tracing the ways personal experience and creative work shape one another.
The website serves as both a digital gallery and an oral history, connecting generations and inviting others to explore how poetry grows out of lived experience.
Our Story
Ana: In the winter of 2023, while visiting Zagreb, I came across several boxes of family photographs. I began looking through them with my grandmother, Branka, and what started as a bonding experience quickly revealed her remarkable memory as she reconstructed events, relationships, and places in detail.
At the time, I was completing my undergraduate thesis in the United States; a series of illustrations responding to the poetry of my grandfather. My initial interest in using our photographs for that project gradually developed into a distinct, collaborative undertaking: a visual and oral history archive built around Branka’s recollections. The process of reviewing and interviewing was both an incredible exercise for her memory, and a way for me to meet and connect with my uncle and grandfather, who both passed away years before my birth.
Since moving to Zagreb in May 2024, I have been working with Branka to catalogue, digitize, and transcribe these materials. The project now functions as both an artistic and archival study, tracing the intersections of family memory, cultural history, and creativity within the Lalić household.
I hope that by sharing it, others who are interested in his poetry can learn more about his inspirations and process, and understand it in a more personal capacity. Until I heard the stories and saw the photos I’ve put on this website, he was a stranger in life to me too.
The Process
Ana: This project began with the task of sorting and scanning over two thousand photographs, slides, postcards, and letters. Using an Epson 8.5 x 11 scanner, I digitized each item at an average of 800 dpi, prioritizing quality (much to my laptop's despair).
I reviewed the scans with my grandmother, Branka, recording our conversations on my phone as she identified people, dates, and places, often branching into stories that revealed the lives behind the images. When she spoke in Serbian, I used Gladia to transcribe and translate the audio files; an approach that allowed her to speak more comfortably in her native language and provided more in depth and natural narratives.
I catalogued and organized the digitized materials by subject and year before uploading them to the Wix website I built, The Works of Love (titled after the collection of Francis R. Jones’s translations of Ivan V. Lalić’s poetry). The site initially served as a practical viewing tool for Branka but evolved into a broader artistic and archival platform as I began pairing her recorded stories with the photographs, and family and friends expressed interest in viewing the site too.
The illustrations featured on the site were sourced from The Earth and Living Things (1932), chosen for their thematic resonance with both Ivan’s poetry and our family history. Branka has often recalled Ivan’s view of life and death as two inseparable parts of a whole, like night and day, which inspired many of my aesthetic choices. All editing and digital collage work were completed using Photoshop and most often the MacBook Preview editor.
Consultations in Belgrade with faculty at the University of Philology and admirers of Ivan’s work helped refine the site’s structure and focus. I am also deeply grateful to my college advisor, Stella Ebner, whose encouragement shaped this project from its earliest beginnings. She was the one who urged me to include Branka’s stories in my senior thesis and was the first to see the origins of this website, when it existed only as a rough draft built with HTML and CSS. Her belief in the project gave me the confidence to continue developing it into what it has become.
This project has also brought new energy and purpose to my grandmother’s life. At ninety-four, after several years confined to her bed and wheelchair, it has motivated her to revisit places like Rovinj in person. This has been a way to reconnect with her son and with Ivan, to relive parts of life that she said once felt unreachable. I am deeply grateful that we were able to do this together; for what it has meant to her, and for the privilege of spending nearly every day by her side over these past two years.
As of fall 2025, nearly two years have passed since I began scanning, and there are still many more photographs and letters to go. It has been a great privilege to work on this project and I look forward to continuing this work and sharing it will all of you.
Contact
Please write to us with any questions, requests, suggestions or criticisms you have to share. Thank you for visiting our website and taking the time to learn about our project!
+1 917-847-9970
Such exceptional material! We are all so grateful for the chance to see various snippets of the life of Ivan V. Lalić that tell a great story about one of the greatest Serbian poets of all time. Thank you, truly. We can't wait to see more!
Ana - this is beautiful! Amazing work! 💜👏
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