This is Mrle – or rather, Damir 'Mrle' Martinović, the charismatic bass player and frontman of the legendary Croatian rock band Let 3 – shot for a feature in B Inspired (Brussels Airlines inflight magazine) which I did earlier this year. He's standing on the waterfront in the band's home town, Rijeka, which was inaugurated as European Capital of Culture 2020 on 1 February. This was taken on the morning after the formal opening and mesmerising evening concert of Rijeka2020. Mrle turned up for the shoot as agreed despite the fact that, like most of Rijeka, he'd stayed up most of the previous night and had a rather incomplete memory of where he'd been. Notwithstanding the infamy of Let 3's live performances (they often performed wearing nothing but strategically-placed dog muzzles) and other antics (such as releasing a CD with nothing recorded on it), Mrle has also released a couple of albums for children, with his wife Ivanka Mazurkijević (the duo are called, rather wittily, MrLee & IvaneSky), and they were involved in one of the flagship projects of Rijeka2020, 'Dječja kuća (the Children’s House). ‘I can never understand why people always seem to think you need to write something stupid when you're writing a song for kids’ he says to me later that morning, over a pint-glass of water and several espressos. ‘Why? Just write them a decent song!’ More images in the Croatia archive gallery. © Rudolf Abraham