This is the often-complicated question that the exhibition Wiċċna attempts to answer, through photography. Zvezdan Reljic tells Ramona Depares all about his new project.
What is Wiċċna?
Wiċċna (Our face) is an artistic project of sociological and community value which consists of around 200 photographic portraits of individuals from different backgrounds, generations and ethnicities, who live or have passed through Malta.
Each portrait is accompanied with a short caption taken from the individual’s answer to the often complicated question: “Where are you from?”. A photography exhibition will take place in November this year at Blitz in Valletta, together with the launch of the book, which will also feature aesthetical, anthropological and literary essays on aspects of identity and photography, each to be written in a different language that has influenced Malta’s history, from Arabic (Walid Nabhan) to English (Alexandra Pace), French (Philippe Parizot), Italian (Virginia Monteforte), Maltese (Leanne Ellul), and Spanish (Antoine Cassar).
When did this project start?
The project initially started late in 2017, with the creation of the team and communication with a large number of people asking them to take part. After receiving initial funding from the Malta Arts Fund, we were then able to acquire material, photographing people, develop films, make copies and select one portrait to be printed as an original lith print for reproduction in the book.
What is the aim behind it?
I would like Wiċċna to be an extended snapshot of the nuanced – neither limited nor diluted – diversity of contemporary Maltese society. There are a number of questions that I would like the book to attempt to answer, through presentation and juxtaposition of portraits and through the essays written in response to them. How wide is the palette of facial features that define the look of a people, insofar as such a definition is possible? How many faces can people contain? How many peoples make up a face?
How did you start finding people for portraits and meeting them?
I started getting in touch with people mostly through social media, people seeing posts were tagging friends of whom they thought might be interested. But, later, word of mouth began to take over and people started to call me.
We created a Wiċċna website along with a Facebook page and there was an incredible response. People of different ethnicities residing in Malta and Maltese nationals with mixed heritage, would sometimes come over to the studio in Sliema with their children or a parent.
I told them that I would need them to write approximately a sentence about themselves and their words will be used as a caption in the book, which meant I had very interesting conversations with each one. We got to know each other on a personal level and so the portrait shoot after the coffee was very easy to do and took only a small fraction of time.
For the last four months, people were dropping in nearly every day. I then decided to publish each caption written in the native language of the person who was photographed, with a translation in English.
I would like Wiċċna to be an extended snapshot of the nuanced diversity of contemporary Maltese society
How did you finalise the list of faces that are included in the book?
Believe it or not, the list is still not finalised. Some who weren’t able to come as they were abroad are coming home in summer, so I still have portraits to do. Also, I discovered that some of my Maltese friends I have known for two decades have an interesting story to tell about their mixed heritage and I really want to feature either them or their parents in the book.
We started a crowdfunding campaign to try and cover the cost of the Wiċċna book. It turns out that the book will be approximately 500 pages long. I would really like the book to have a true Maltese feel, so I got Kotba Calleja on board to create a special hand-made slipcase, each painted by brush using paints mixed with fine dust of Maltese stone. This way, each slipcase, like the portraits themselves (and their stories), will be different, but at the same time, similar in essence.
What is the technique being used for photography and printing and why did you opt for this?
I am using black and white film photography processes. The Wiċċna portraits are to be printed using a silver gelatin lith process on archival baryta paper – these prints can last for centuries.
Lith prints are a process, giving harsh grain in shadows and soft highlights and each type of paper and developing recipe offers a different tone, from beige or yellow to earth reds. People can often confuse lith print grain on prints with ‘film grain’ – grain on lith prints depends on the kind of paper and the state and type of lith developer used. Each print is made in a darkroom and it is practically impossible to make two prints with exactly the same tonal values.
What is the biggest challenge in translating the concept to reality?
Everything. Challenges are unexpected things and I don’t think about problems which might occur.
It is more like realising that if you add something to your concept while you are even halfway into the project – something which will make a clearer statement and add more value to the whole – you start improvising and finding solutions to manage to keep to the budget and time frame. However, I think large creative projects often change on the way and this is probably the nature of the work.
People who don’t work in the creative industry or were never part of any art projects often don’t realise how much energy and money is needed. In Malta, it is often seen as less worthy and less serious. And that is strange, as creatives are giving us something that makes our living make sense, through the music we love or artists we look up to.
Wiċċna is supported by Malta Arts Fund – Project Support Grant. If you would like to support production or pre-order the Wiċċna book, you can visit their crowdfunding page at Zaar – www.zaar.com.mt/projects/wiccna.