Maltese photographer Joe P Smith recently returned from Brussels where his photographic exhibition The Texture of Memory had a very successful month-long run at the European Economic and Social Council as part of the external cultural programme Reunion in conjunction with Malta’s Presidency of the EU Council.
Smith’s exhibition features a selection of photographs from his ongoing photographic and anthropological study of the ageing population of Vittoriosa. In 2009 the artist had already published a first volume of portraits together with interviews in a book entitled Survivors – The Ageing Population of Birgu and the works shown in Brussels are part of another collection of over 85 portraits and interviews that will feature in a second volume.
This second part of the project also served as the basis for the artist’s dissertation in his Master of Fine Arts – Digital Arts degree at the University of Malta.
The collection is currently on exhibit at the Xicheng public library in Beijing.