Do not judge a book by its cover, we are often told and photographer Zvezdan Reljić gives the same advice in relation to people’s faces.
He admits that, even after years of experience of portrait photography, he is still usually wrong when he often tries to guess one’s nationality based on the contours of the face.
An intimate collection of lith-printed photographic portraits of people who live or visit the Maltese islands for whatever reasons, now running at Blitz, in Valletta, forms part of a twofold project titled Wiċċna (our face).
A book, which includes 200 such portraits and aesthetic, anthropological and literary essays on aspects of physiognomy, identity and photography, makes up the second part of this feat.
The essays are written in languages that have influenced Malta throughout its history: Arabic (Walid Nabhan), English (Alexandra Pace), French (Philippe Parizot), Italian (Virginia Monteforte), Maltese (Leanne Ellul) and Spanish (Antoine Cassar).
How many faces can people contain? How many peoples make up a face?
Wiċċna features portraits of individuals from different backgrounds, generations and ethnicities, accompanied by a caption taken from the individual’s answer to the often-complicated question: “Where are you from?”
Wiċċna features portraits of individuals from different backgrounds, generations and ethnicities.
Mr Reljić had told The Sunday Times of Malta earlier this year that he 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 the 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?” he had asked.
Exhibition curator Alexandra Pace described Wiċċna as a photographic legacy that looked back at the society it portrayed and into the eyes of future readers.
“Mr Reljić’s pictures arrest us partly because they are perennial, the faces in his repertoire seem suspended in an enduring limbo, extracted from any kind of environment. They are individuals who are situated in one specific geographic location at this point in time but their consciousness most likely endures in multiple loci,” she said.
“The viewer stares at the faces staring back as the burdensome transaction between sitter and photographer is materialised in Mr Reljić’s eloquent, ceaseless visual language and, through this work, he creates a multitude of pictures that waiver between the individual and the universal condition of humanity,” Ms Pace continued.
The exhibition runs at Blitz, 68, St Lucy Street, Valletta, until December 13 and is open from 1 to 6pm, Tuesdays to Fridays, and between 10am an 1pm on Saturday.
Entry is free.
