Isle Landers by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Darrin Zammit Lupi is an established photojournalist based in Malta who has covered stories including the Bosnian war, the Kosovo refugee crisis, the Libyan uprising, the 2004 south-east Asia tsunami, amongst others. His latest publication, Isle Landers, deals with the ongoing human tragedy taking place in the Mediterranean Sea.
Now also nicknamed the infamous ‘Black Mediterranean’, the Sea has witnessed the death of thousands of refugees migrating from the African continent to seek better pastures on the European mainland. Zammit Lupi focuses on this relentless human tragedy through the eyes of those who managed to survive the crossings. The protagonists (survivors) in his photographs have experienced a metaphorical re-birth and are testimony to those who crossed the ultimate border - the passage between here and the beyond.
Zammit Lupi responds unabashedly to this aporetic situation. In presenting the collection of images, he proficiently brings out the desperation, misfortunes and the pains of others. Suffering, or death itself, are not manifest in these pictures, they are implied.
In his collection of photographs, presented at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, the viewer can hardly begin with enjoyment as he/she engages with the object of attention or abject misery. How is one expected to react in front of such images? Do we scan through the images with revulsion, thereby denying the photograph’s asset of arresting one’s awareness? Or do we take in their full content, and consider also the aesthetic qualities as in Salgado’s case, so that they remind us, if we need such reminding, that the visual telling of loss and grief, so personal, is also universal. And so the viewer of desperate photographs faces an intractable conundrum.
Zammit Lupi deals with this problem differently. His approach to making an image sticks in one’s mind, moves away from the sensational or shock content, and without struggling to make beautiful pictures, he uses pictorial integrity and compositional quality to impact the subject of dislocation of people and their suffering. In one of his photographs, he uses chromatic contrast coupled with a pair of silhouetted hands reaching out to a refugee who has just been rescued after a boat capsized around 150km south of Malta. The first warm rays of the rising sun illuminate the face of the survivor and the numb expression of his face is moulded in both fear and happiness. These people and their suffering becomes Zammit Lupi’s compositional devices.
The photographer chooses not to sentimentalise his subjects, but urges us to think of what happens when suffering is viewed third hand. Unlike many postmodern critics who scorn the ideals and practice of documentary photography, this collection of photographs by Zammit Lupi tells us one thing: that we need to respond to and learn from photographs, rather than simply take them apart.
About Ballarat International Foto Biennale
Darrin Zammit Lupi will be a guest of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. The launch of his exhibition will be held on Saturday, 12 September, and be officially opened by the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre Executive Director, David Manne.
The BIFB Core Program is a series of invited exhibitions by 21 artists, representing some of the best and most innovative contemporary photographic practice currently on show. The Core Program is staged in seven unique heritage buildings in Ballarat, Victoria.
BIFB’15 celebrates a notable 10-year milestone. The sixth biennial BIFB is still the most respected event of its kind in Australia and the only internationally-significant photographic event in regional Victoria.
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
22 August - 20 September 2015
http://www.ballaratfoto.org
