Kornati in black-and-white

A few monochrome photos taken from the first ever written guidebook about Kornati archipelago.

It was written by Amos-Rube Filipi and published in 1972. Today this guidebook has an antiquarian value. The writer was not only a historian, but also very familiar with the object of his writing – he was born in Sali on island of Dugi otok in 1905.

A cover of a first guidebook to Kornati with title Jugoslavija Kornati and a picture of a traditional wooden boat gajeta sailing on a calm sea with Kornati islands in the background

In these photos you can capture a glimpse of the way people used to live in Kornati. It was a harsh life full of hard labour. The photos were probably taken in the first half of the twentieth century, long before tourists discovered this unique archipelago.

An old photo from Kornati in black-and-white, a traditional wooden boat gajeta sailing on a perfectly calm sea with silhouette of islands in the background

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white showing local people in everyday work - maintaining the boats, drying figs on the sun and children helping adults

An old photo Kornati in black-and-white showing a man putting fishing nets on the sun to dry them

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white sowing couple of old houses side by side with fishing nets drying on the sun and sea surface in the foreground

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white showing an old stone house with small piers in front and a traditional wooden boat - gajeta - with a man paddling in the foreground

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white, amidst a typical treeless landscape a couple of small fields with dense vegetation and one solitary boat in the middle of the photo

Sn old photo of Kornati in black-and-white showing houses with piers in a port, couple of scattered fields in the bacground and everything surrounded with typical Kornati desert like landscape

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white taken from the top of the hill and showing stone houses and small fields with stone walls scattered around them

An old panoramic photo of Kornati archipelago in black-and-white taken from the air

An old photo of Kornati in black-and-white showing dozen of big and small fisherman's boats moored close together somewhere in Kornati archipelago

Photo of Kornati in black-and-white showing three fisherman's boats while catching fish from a distance

An old panoramic photo of Kornati archipelago in black-and-white, the islands being black and sea surface white due to the reflection of sunlight

This guidebook was a serious publication and it is still relevant. There are 4 chapters:

Introduction
General information about Kornati (geography, geology, climate, toponymy, history, stonewalls, fishing…)
Specific information about Kornati divided into four parts: the area around islands Zut and Sit; from Katina to Mana; from Vrulje to Lavsa and from Lavsa to the end of Kornati archipelago
Appendix (Warnings for sailors, Telascica, List of all islands, islets and rocks in Kornati) with small maps for every part of Kornati, 23 photos in black-and-white and a complete map of Kornati archipelago.

Every part is very well written and elaborated in details. There are numerous facts given in an interesting and intelligent way.

We have included a lot of these facts and stories into our blog posts.