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Maltese photography featured at the 14th Ragusa Foto Festival

Maltese photographers and lecturers, Therese Debono and Joseph P. Smith, are representing Malta at the 14th edition of the Ragusa Foto Festival, an international festival of contemporary photography held in the UNESCO-listed setting of Ragusa Ibla, Sicily.

Founded and directed by Stefania Paxhia, with Alessandra Mauro serving as artistic director for its 2026 edition, the festival explores the theme Archetipi Mediterranei (Mediterranean Archetypes). Running from 27 August to 27 September 2026, the programme brings together international artists whose work examines the landscapes, identities, gestures and collective experiences that shape contemporary life across the Mediterranean.

Therese Debono’s project BLANK is presented at Palazzo Cosentini as part of Dall’altra parte del Mediterraneo (On the Other Side of the Mediterranean), a curated section examining emerging geographies of photography across the region. The section brings Debono’s work into dialogue with projects by Moroccan-Belgian artist Mous Lamrabat, Tunisian Magnum photographer Zied Ben Romdhane and Greek artist and filmmaker Evangelia Kranioti.

Developed in response to Malta’s rapidly changing built environment, BLANK investigates the exposed white party walls created as older buildings are demolished and replaced by new developments. Intended eventually to be concealed by adjacent construction, these walls remain visible across the Maltese landscape as temporary yet increasingly persistent structures.

Through these surfaces, Debono examines how places bear witness to both memory and erasure, registering what has disappeared while pointing towards what has yet to be built.

At Ragusa Foto Festival, BLANK is presented through four works and three visual registers. The aerial register, exhibited in this form for the first time, reveals the walls as a repeated, mappable condition across Malta’s urban landscape. The frontal register confronts the viewer with the project’s monumental white wall, while the forensic register, also shown publicly for the first time, moves closer to uncover the marks, textures, signs and traces held within its apparently blank surface.

Together, the three registers move between overview, confrontation and close examination, revealing how different meanings emerge according to the distance from which a landscape is read.

Debono also participated in the festival conversation On the Other Side of the Mediterranean, led by Alessandra Mauro with Sam Stourdzé, Director of the French Academy in Rome, and Mous Lamrabat. The discussion considered the changing geographies of global photography and the ways contemporary artists are interpreting the Mediterranean from different cultural positions.

Maltese photographer Joseph P. Smith is represented in the festival’s Circuito OFF with Survivors: The Ageing Population of Birgu, exhibited at the Antico Convento dei Cappuccini. The project focuses on the people of Birgu and the lived experiences of an ageing community, contributing another distinctly Maltese perspective to the festival’s exploration of place, continuity and collective memory.

The inclusion of both projects places Maltese photographic practice within a broader Mediterranean conversation: one concerned with how communities inhabit their environments, how landscapes retain evidence of transformation, and how photography can make visible the relationships between place, memory and identity.

The 14th Ragusa Foto Festival opened in Ragusa Ibla on 27 August 2026. Exhibitions continue until 27 September 2026.

Event details
Ragusa Foto Festival – 14th Edition
Theme: Archetipi Mediterranei
Dates: 27 August–27 September 2026
Location: Ragusa Ibla, Sicily
Festival founder and director: Stefania Paxhia
Artistic director: Alessandra Mauro
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