With his recognisable shock of white hair and weather-beaten face, Frank Attard is part of The Times’ history. He tells Ariadne Massa he loved the job so much he would have worked for free.
Intrigued by the violent storm, Frank Attard took a detour through Marsascala, navigating his Baby Austin through the giant waves pummelling the road when a crowd gathered by the shoreline caught his attention.
He was off work that day and, together with his wife, had just picked up their daughter from school and was going for a drive, but, sniffing a story, he got out to see what was happening.
A man told him a ship had run aground. Mr Attard grabbed his camera, told his wife and daughter to wait for him in the car and walked through the lashing rain to get the story.
It was Tuesday, September 23, 1969. The wind had reached 48 knots and the heavy seas smashed a 22,000-ton Greek tanker, the Angel Gabriel, on the jagged rocks of St Thomas Point, where the abandoned Jerma Palace Hotel stands today.
When Mr Attard reached the scene he astounded by what he saw – numerous soldiers, police and civilians were risking their lives, standing chest deep in the sea as they formed a human chain from the shore to the tanker to help the sailors to safety.
Mr Attard took a few photos of the dramatic action and two hours later he was back in the car. He drove his wife and daughter home and headed for The Times’ offices in Valletta to develop the images.
What emerged from the darkroom was a photo that made the news worldwide and won the photographer numerous accolades, including a bronze medal in the news section of the World Press Photos of 1969 and an honorary mention in the British Press Pictures.
It shows a sailor being held ashore by two men, who had just slipped in the sea and two policemen rushing to help in the foreground. Behind, is a human chain running all the way to the grounded tanker that was being ripped in half by the waves.
“For me taking that photo gave me greater satisfaction than if I had won the national lottery,” says Mr Attard, 82, holding a fading copy of the photo that won him international acclaim.
His weather-beaten face wrinkles into a smile as he recalls how he joined The Times as a paperboy when he was just 14. It was 1942, during the height of World War II, and he would walk from Ħamrun to Valletta at 5 a.m. every day. His job was to place the newspaper rolls of The Times and Il-Berqa on a handcart and haul it to Floriana. He would hand over the rolls to bus drivers of different localities who would in turn distribute them to the agents at the end of the journey.
“Sometimes during the air raids, we’d dash off to the shelter and leave the cart there. I never gave the bombs a second thought,” he says.
“In those days we walked a lot, and caught buses. At 1 p.m. we used to go to the Victory Kitchen for a small piece of meat or clumps of pasta,” he said,
Five years after he joined he ended up filling in for a photographer to cover a football game at the Gżira stadium. Nobody taught him how to use the camera – he was simply told take the ‘machine’ and go shoot. The outcome was good and he was kept on.
“Then I was closing my eyes and shooting,” he says, with a cheeky cackle.
Photography carved his career and right up to this day Mr Attard never leaves home without a camera, even when he goes to Mass – “what if the church’s roof collapses?”
Whoever knows him will remember his Minolta slung over his shoulder, seeming like an extra limb protruding from his side. These days he grudgingly carries a digital camera in his pocket, always at the ready.
He refuses to look at the image he captured so as not to ruin the excitement of holding the photo in hand and insists on printing each one.
Mulling over how the newspaper has changed over the decades, the first thing that comes to his mind is how in those days, political parties were not rolling out the red carpet for journalists.
“As photographers, we never dared get too close to the truck where the leaders of the political parties were giving their speech during meetings, especially those of Labour. I always tried to find the roof of a flat overlooking the meeting to shoot from there,” he says.
Being a journalist or photographer during the island’s turbulent political history meant being agile because they were forever being chased by police or thugs.
“You had to be good in the 100 metres (race) to cover the political meetings because they were always chasing us... I’d tighten my laces well and be ready to sprint off.”
In those days, he adds, nobody cooperated so getting information made journalists’ job doubly hard – contrary to the equipment and facilities they had at their disposal nowadays.
Sitting back on a sofa in his Birżebbuġa home, Mr Attard has surrounded himself by his favourite photos and awards – such as the Għall-Qadi tar-Repubblika medal in 1998, the Gold Award honouring his significant contribution to journalism in 2000, and the Elderly of the Year in 2006.
A nearby table is crammed with frames of all sizes portraying the happy moments with his family, his only daughter Miriam and her three children.
A two-seater is piled high with black and white photos, while more protrude from brown paper bags by the side. None are dated or archived, but he remembers every event and detail... albeit not the year.
One photo that has pride of place is one of Queen Elizabeth II, who was then a princess, speaking to a woman dressed in the black għonella, the traditional full-length cloak worn as part of a Sunday-best outfit.
Mr Attard covered the Queen every time she was in Malta, and her entourage trusted him. He was always attempting to get a different angle that portrayed she was in Malta, whenever she visited between 1949 and 1951.
“Goodness knows how many photographers captured her beautiful face, laughing and happy. But it could be taken anywhere so when she was in Malta I tried to capture her next to someone or against a background that showed she was in Malta,” he recalls.
The war and subsequent assignments taught Mr Attard to be frugal, and he ended up carving a reputation as the ‘one-click photographer’.
“Sometimes, for example, if we were covering the Queen’s visit, we had just one minute to take photos and that was it. We didn’t have the luxury of snapping away and getting some 40 frames.”
He still cannot understand how fellow photographers click away, getting 100 frames of the same event, when the editor would only be using one image. Somehow, the one click Mr Attard shot always got the action, and he is proud he never returned to the office without capturing the moment.
“I never used to like taking a lot of photos. In those days the equipment was different. I’d just grab the action and that was it.”
Though he remains sentimentally attached to the era of black and white photos, which he believes have a greater prestige, Mr Attard is full of praise for editors’ decision to use bigger photos and credit the photographer with a byline.
Having retired in 1998, he still cannot believe he spent 55 and a half years working for The Times; the company’s longest serving employee.
Why did he spend so many years with the company?
“I would have stayed at The Times even if they didn’t pay me. It was such an interesting job: I met people from all walks of life and covered so many historic moments. I feel I was part of the paper’s success.”
Watch excerpts of the interview on www.timesofmalta.com.