The naked selfies of several young Maltese women circulated on the internet have caused a stir, with several blaming the degenerating morals of a new generation.
However, explicit private photos are certainly not a recent phenomenon. Times of Malta spoke to veteran photographer Mario Mintoff, who runs Photocity, and he recalled that even in the ’80s, raunchy pictures were a common thing.
At the time he used to work at P. Cutajar, one of the largest photographic laboratories in Malta, and of the 1,000 films processed every Monday, half a dozen would contain pictures of topless or nude women.
“They used to drop them off on Mondays – they would have done a photo shoot at the weekend,” said Mr Mintoff.
As the photos would come out of the developing machine, the operators would sometimes notice their racy content and at printing stage all the staff would troop over to have a look.
“People who dropped off these films would always pick them up sealed in a bag a week later – never the next day – so that everyone would have forgotten about the content and we wouldn’t be able to identify them.”
Austin Tufigno, who runs Tufigno Photo Service, said the wheel was “certainly” not invented in the digital decade.
He recalled that his father, who had established the studio in 1947, had printed a few risqué photos of women in his time.
Over decades, the studio also had couples coming in for studio sessions for ‘hot’ photos.
“These things always happened – the difference is that now they are happening in public,” said Mr Tufigno.
Patrons of photo studios used to trust the staff that the content of their films would be kept confidential. “And in fact we always kept everything in confidence. However, between us photographers, we’d have a chat or two about them.”
The digital era now made it more difficult to control the widespread sharing of explicit content, the two photographers agreed.
“Photos can now be shared easily through social networks and mobile phone apps – and before you know it, it’s all over the place,” said Mr Tufigno.