An elderly woman pushes a pram through the streets of Żebbuġ, in which she carries a selection of vegetables for sale, and heads towards the chapel of St Roque.
A familiar sight to people from her village, the woman’s presence has been immortalised in one of a series of photographs taken to celebrate the chapels of Malta and Gozo.
The photos, taken by Enrico Formica, are being published in a series of books about the islands’ chapels on the initiative of Eddie Aquilina, known for the “360 Degree” book collection that contain spectacular scenes of Malta and Gozo.
Mr Aquilina’s passion for churches and feasts inspired him to turn the lens onto the chapels that sometimes go unnoticed and draw people’s attention to the hard work that goes behind maintaining these architectural gems.
“There are so many volunteers and entire families involved in helping out with these chapels. I didn’t want to take photos of closed chapels. I wanted them to be alive and involve the real people who look after them,” Mr Aquilina said.
“The help I found from these people is tremendous as they tried to accommodate me... For me, this is a labour of love... It’s so satisfying because I’m building a library that will not date,” he said.
So far one book, out of a series of five, was published last year with another book expected to be released soon. One of them will focus on the treasures inside the chapels.
There are over 280 chapels in Malta and Gozo and organising each chapel for a shoot takes lots of work. Mr Aqulilina explained that he usually started by contacting the parish priest who told him who held the keys to a particular chapel.
Like a treasure hunt, he then contacted those people and they visited the place together to determine the best time of day for the shoot. Sometimes he even contacted neighbours to ask them to move cars or open windows on the day of the shoot for a perfect backdrop.
“This has created a healthy pique... They want their chapel to look good and be in the book... As I’ve said before, this island is an open air museum,” Mr Aquilina said.
Throughout his experience working on the books, he met many amazing people and came across amusing situations.
When shooting St Anne’s chapel, in Pwales, he learnt the power of nature’s clock. He wanted an early afternoon photo of a farmer, Toni, with his sheep near the chapel.
“When I told him I wanted to take the photo at about 3 p.m., with a heavy accent he told me: ‘Do you eat at all times of day? Do you think you can take out sheep anytime? It’s either at 9 a.m. or the evening... You can’t dictate to sheep what time to go out grazing... I can try to help but you make arrangements with the sun to come out when you want it to’,” Mr Aquilina recalled in amusement.
When the day of the photo arrived, the farmer managed to get the sheep out a bit earlier that evening. He warned the photographer not to make sudden noises or movements that would startle the sheep.
When photographing St Peter’s chapel in Lija, located near an old people’s home, the nuns there brought out the elderly to sit on benches and animate the road.
Schoolchildren, wearing their uniforms, gathered outside St Anne in Attard to play football for the occasion and, in Dingli, the parish priest gathered young people on the parvis for an outdoor sermon.
In another amusing anecdote, while at the Marsascala chapel of St Antonio, the dog of a nearby farmer decided to turn up for the photo.
“When we were about to take the photo he started moving around. It took about 15 minutes to get him to calm down.
“Suddenly he found this position,” Mr Aqulina said.