Biography

Zeljko’s parents emigrated to Australia from Croatia in the late 1960s and he was born at Rockhampton in Queensland in 1974. When he was three, he was taken to his parents’  motherland.  He remained there throughout his formative years before returning to Australia at the age of twenty two.
A great part of Zelko’s upbringing – throughout his childhood and early teens - saw him steeped and actively participating in the world of Croatian culture, its music and folklore,  imbuing in him a deep understanding and love for his ethnic roots  and the traditions of his people.
Given his strong sense of attachment to his ethnicity, it is no wonder that in 1991, aged sixteen and officially one of the youngest soldiers, he volunteered with his two elder brothers to achieve the attainment of a Croatian national dream; a dream that had smouldered for a thousand years - the creation of an independent and democratic Croatia.
His adventurous spirit took him back to Australia in 1997, arriving in Sydney with no money, no return ticket, unable to speak English and without any family or support.  However he arrived with a dream for his future and a determination to succeed, believing that a man without  vision and willpower is destined to meander aimlessly through life as a vagabond.
His passion for photography was inadvertently born out of frustration, his artistic talent thwarted by his technical inability to create photographic art through the lens of his first camera, a Nikon F55.  With characteristic stubborn determination, he set out to teach himself every detail of camera work until he had thoroughly mastered the ability to portray on film every nuance of his artistic vision of each scene that he captured.  And with the realization of what he could achieve, there developed his passion for this unique artistic medium.
He was fortunate to meet and was greatly influenced by Ken Duncan, one of the world’s great panoramic photographers.  Like thousands of other photographers he was attracted and inspired by Ken’s ability to so creatively display nature or the beauty of God’s creation as Ken likes to call it.
In 2007/2008, now a photographer with his own authentic style, Zeljko embarked on his next adventure and achieved his dream of traveling to every corner of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, not with a gun, but with a camera to re-discover its diverse beauty and present it on film.
The photographic images which he captured there and in Australia resulted in his first and highly successful exhibition in Sydney portraying his passion for nature and leaving us with a sense that the beauty that is our planet is for all mankind to share, transcending imaginary borders and political divisions – a triumph to the distinctive style he has established.
It is this sense that he invites all who view his work to consider and share – a sense of the universal precious gift that is Planet Earth.  That is his dream. A man without a dream is a man without a life.