Working class heroes

A striking collection of 88 black and white portraits in book form by Maltese photographer Joe Smith has clinched an award at this year's edition of the Organisation Prix de La Photographie - Paris.

About 600 submissions from around the world were entered for the contest.

Each portrait, which is accompanied by an interview with the sitters, will be printed by Velprint and published in a book called Survivors: The Aging Population Of Birgu, next October.

The portraits lay bare the character of the sitters to the minutest detail. In the hands, the faces and the posture one can almost sense the milestones of triumph against all odds of these people whose life was slighted either by tragedy or hardship.

In the profiles, Mr Smith managed to bring out not only the persona of the elderly folk who hail from the historic maritime city of Vittoriosa but the knick knacks that give away the passions and beliefs of these unsung warriors.

In these representations one can make out religious artifacts, holy pictures, enamel coated metal water jugs and iron beds in Spartan abodes. The seminal idea of this stupendous archive was sown about six years ago when Mr Smith was commissioned to shoot actors performing along the streets in Vittoriosa.

"I went for this assignment an hour early and, walking along Hilda Tabone Street, I came upon this elderly woman leaning against the jamb of her front door with her left hand resting on a white wrought-iron grill.

"I asked whether I could photograph her. In turn, she wanted to know whether I hailed from Vittoriosa. But when I said my town was Rabat, she recounted a bizarre WWII episode that cost her the right arm," Mr Smith recalled.

The woman, Ineż Portelli, recounted how she had gone to Rabat with her eight-year old son taking some milk to her sister who was a "refugee" there; hundreds of people from around Grand Harbour had moved to towns a fair distance away from the fiery blitz of the enemy, gaining the tag "refugees".

Arriving at Rabat she barely noticed that the eerie silence there was due to an air raid warning. But she soon came to her senses. A bomb exploded nearby shattering her right arm. Numbed by the pain but not knowing what hit her she looked for her son and seeing him covered in blood asked what was wrong with him. The young boy retorted: "Look at your arm, ma!"

After this "first" assignment, Vittoriosa mayor John Boxall invited Mr Smith for a drink. The talk soon turned to the wealth of down-to-earth knowledge that was bottled in the collective experience of those people that would be lost if not recorded. This sparked Mr Smith to start beading this social documentary with Mr Boxall fixing appointments for him for Saturday mornings.

"What impressed me most was the resilience of these people as if their character had, like steel, been tempered to withstand all that nature and other humans threw at them. This has been a deeply emotional journey", Mr Smith said.