Three Maltese Photographs Set to Conquer the World Stage – and They’re Not Your Typical Sun-and-Sea Shots

In pictures: how three Maltese lenses are about to take Valletta’s stories to the world stage

The courtyard of the Auberge d’Italie was buzzing yesterday evening, not with tourists hunting for the perfect Instagram angle, but with Maltese photographers quietly adjusting tripods and greeting cousins they hadn’t seen since last village festa. They were there for the official send-off of Malta’s three shortlisted entries in the Sony World Photography Awards—images that will soon hang beside work from Tokyo, New York and Lagos in a touring exhibition that opens in London next month.

Selected from more than 400 local submissions curated by Arts Council Malta, the final trio is anything but postcard-pretty. Instead, the photographs drill into the island’s quieter heartbeat: a grandmother shelling beans under a washing line in Għarb while her WhatsApp pings in her apron pocket; a Gozitan teenager balancing on the rusted bow of a beached dghajsa, sneakers dangling above cobalt water; and, perhaps most arresting, a panoramic night shot of the Grand Harbour captured entirely during the 2023 blackout, when only boat lanterns and church domes lit the limestone.

“People abroad still think Malta is just honey-coloured walls and fireworks,” laughed photographer Maria Micallef, whose dghajsa portrait will travel to Somerset House. “I wanted to show the tension between our past and the fact that this kid streams Netflix on 5G while sitting on a relic.” Micallef, 29, grew up in Xagħra and funded her first camera by selling pastizzi at her aunt’s kiosk—an anecdote that drew applause when Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts Rebecca Buttigieg took the mic to toast the finalists.

The cultural significance runs deeper than a pat on the back. For decades, Maltese visual art has fought the stereotype of “sun-and-sea” clichés. These three images—selected by an international jury that praised their “poetic realism”—signal a shift towards narratives Maltese artists themselves want to tell. The Arts Council’s new strategy, launched last January, earmarks €150,000 annually for photographers to document “intangible heritage”: knife-sharpeners who still ring bicycle bells through back streets, festa band clubs rehearsing at 2 a.m., elderly widowers keeping canary cages on Marsaxlokk balconies. The shortlisted photos are the first fruits of that fund.

Community impact is already visible. St Margaret College secondary school in Sliema has adapted the images into a citizenship syllabus, asking students to map where each shot was taken and interview older neighbours about how those spaces have changed. Meanwhile, the Għarb parish priest has invited Micallef to project her bean-shelling grandmother onto the church façade during next month’s feast of St Publius, turning a moment of quiet domestic labour into a temporary public monument.

Local reaction online has been swift and tongue-in-cheek. One Facebook commenter joked that the blackout panorama should be “printed on a beer can so we remember why we stocked up on candles.” Another demanded to know whether the Gozitan teenager got a free phone upgrade for modelling. Beneath the banter, however, is pride that Maltese stories—told without filter—will stand in one of the world’s most prestigious photography halls. The exhibition moves from London to Tokyo later this year; the Arts Council is lobbying for Valletta to host the 2025 leg, which would bring an estimated 30,000 visitors to the capital.

For now, the photographers insist the real win is closer to home. “My nanna saw her picture on Times of Malta and called crying,” said Micallef, voice cracking slightly. “She said, ‘They’ll know we’re not just rocks in the middle of the sea.’ That’s everything.” As the courtyard emptied and the bells of St John’s Co-Cathedral struck nine, the three frames were carefully bubble-wrapped for their journey. Somewhere between the limestone glow and the salt on the breeze, Malta’s next chapter was already being written—one shutter click at a time.