PRINTS OF DARKNESS
Published in The Times, Weekender Supplement, 7 October 1995.
By Adriana Cacciottolo
Displaced Persons - Bosnia
Winner of Dunhill Gold Medal 1995
Since he first started dabbling in photography some 10 years ago, Darrin Zammit Lupi has achieved award-winning results. In just a few years, his work has achieved enough recognition to earn him a place among Malta's top photographers and a promising future.
The 27 year-old has worked for the local press and has even had a few pictures published in London's The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
His visit to Albania in 1993 and his coverage of the London riots in October that year earned him the '1993 BPC Award for Journalism' in the print journalism section. He has mounted several exhibitions of his photographic work, the latest featuring pictures from his visit to war-torn Bosnia in January this year.
He has two Dunhill Gold Medals and two Silvers to his name among other honours. Not bad for someone who, as a child, never dreamt of being a photographer.
"As a kid I was always fascinated by movies and I always wanted to be an actor playing the role of James Bond," Darrin said, seated among mounds of books, CDs and an ever-increasing collection of negatives and slides in his room.
His first camera, a toy which barely took pictures, stimulated only a vague interest in photography. What really aroused his brain cells and set his adrenaline pumping was a 1981 feature on National Geographic magazine on the eruption of the volcano Mount St Helen in the Rockies in America.
"Those photos really impressed me," Darrin enthused. "There was the action, the danger. I was totally captivated by the wonderful photographs of faraway exotic places, extraordinary photographs of the most ordinary things.
"It made me realise just how powerful pictures can be. It was then that I started to think more visually and began to feel the urge to take pictures myself. But I soon learnt that there's a lot more to taking pictures than pressing the shutter button - that's the easiest part of it.
EYE FOR DETAILS:"The photographer is as much a journalist as the writer."
"I got my first real camera, a Canon, when I was 16 and with the first film, shot the flower pots on the roof of our house. I must admit the results were so bad that, looking back on them, I think I must have pressed the shutter by mistake.
"Jonathan Wrigley first introduced me to technique back in 1985 when I was working at The Malta Experience, but most of what I know is the fruit of sheer trial and error. As regards monochrome prints, which I infinitely prefer to colour, I owe it all to Pierre Stafrace."
Darrin refined his technique during a 10-month accredited course at Sheffield College, England, where he trained as a photojournalist and became an avid Sheffield Wednesday football supporter.
"I like to be on the go, to be outside, enjoy travelling and action. There's no way I get the same kick out of shooting a still-life as shooting live action drama. It doesn't mean that I actively seek out disasters and miserable people. I like to photograph people in the natural environment.
"Photography has given me a career to focus on. Moreover I get paid for doing what I love most, although not all assignments are interesting."
"Press photography should be art. It isn't always. Just as a journalist can never tell the full story about something - he always selects - so does a photographer. The photographer is as much a journalist as the writer. He must know how to choose the details that tell the reader something essential about the story which the writer cannot do."
"The news photographer must get an interesting photo out of every situation, even the most boring. The picture must be eye-catching enough to grab the attention of the reader and make people read the story. People look at pictures first, always. I also believe pictures should be big and bold."
"The local press needs picture editors or chief photographers who can run the photography team, organise picture coverage and choose pictures in liason with the editor. As far as I'm concerned a reporter is not qualified to choose the picture. And cropping should be done with care. Very often, picture cropping in local papers is similar to chopping a story on the slab without any proper editing."
"A photojournalist must be able to wait, wait and wait without dropping his guard and then react very fast to changing situations. He must have a nose for news. Technique is taken for granted. He must be single-minded, persistent, organised and always prepared with the cameras loaded and ready for instant action. He also must be able to feel comfortable with people from all aspects of society."
Having experienced riots and the possible (though not direct) danger of war, Darrin sensibly draws the line between a picture and his life.
"I don't think any picture is worth dying for. When you take a risk it's always a calculated one. Looking at the Mount St Helen's eruption pictures, I was aware that photographers were killed taking those photos. The camera gives you the illusion of protection. As the photographer sees everything through the viewfinder, he may feel he is in no danger himself."
Darrin's first foreign assignment for a local newspaper took him to Albania in April 1993. "It gave me a chance to practice photojournalism as I believe it should be done - watching and shooting instead of tagging along behind a reporter and being told what pictures to take."
The coveted BPC Award for Journalism was an important step for Darrin because "it drove home the point that photography should be given the importance it deserves in the press."
However he considers the trip to Bosnia in January this year as being the highlight of his career. "The experience made me mature a great deal in a short time, both as a person and as a photographer."
"Malta was probably one of the only countries in the world which hadn't sent a journalist there and I felt I could do it. I needed a Maltese connection to the story as that was the only way I could get financial backing from the local press."
"I found my link in Major David Vassallo, a Maltese British Army surgeon serving with UNPROFOR in Bosnia and had about a fortnight to get it all organised."
"I sailed off on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible to Bari on January 2 as an accredited journalist and reached my destination in Bosnia a couple of days later."
"In Bosnia I was in the centre of the news world. To a certain extent I was watching history in the making."
Darrin's foremost recollection of that experience is the intense cold of the Bosnian winter.
"The early stages of frostbite are excruciatingly painful. I could hardly operate the cameras. Loading film was a nightmare because I had to remove my gloves."
"I also felt tense most of the time because Bugojno, where the UNPROFOR base I stayed in is, was on the confrontation line and the cease-fire in place at the time was fragile. The day after I left, the town was heavily shelled by the Serbs. I just missed my baptism of fire, but I'm not complaining."
The story hasn't been published as it is still awaiting translation into Maltese. The idea of publishing a photographic book on the trip fell through due to the expenses involved."
FROZEN IN TIME: In Bugojno in January 1995, wearing a flak jacket and his Sheffield Wednesday scarf. The marks on the wall are shrapnel and bullet holes, not snow.
Beyond the photojournalist, Darrin the person is a cinema fan, theatre buff, book-worm and music lover. He enjoys arty films by Tarkovsky and Bergman, but also likes mainstream films like Jurassic Park which he has watched countless times, feeding a childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
His vast video collection of art house movies, Shakespeare screen adaptations, documentaries and concerts also include two Snoopy videos of which he is very proud. He also admits to over-indulging in Monty Python videos with mischievous glee and cringes with delight at Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder.
Darrin's lifeline in the darkroom is his music, classical and jazz, which he listens to "for pure ecstatic pleasure" and inspiration and in every spare moment, he dips into a good book, anything from Anthony Grey's epic novels to the entire book collections of Asterix and Tintin adventures.
He has tread the boards several times at the theatre although he prefers directing plays, saying he "thoroughly enjoys being at the heart of the creative process." His next production is the ghost story The Woman In Black to be held in April next year at the Manoel Theatre.
That is the only project which is already set in Darrin's future. As for the rest of his photojournalistic career, he says he can't talk about the future.
"I can only talk about dreams. I hope to get more opportunities to do the real stuff and to be at the cutting edge of photojournalism. Dream on, I tell myself."
Copyright Adriana Cacciottolo 1995
© Darrin J. Zammit Lupi 2000