It would not be easy to pinpoint when the first floodlighting of public buildings started in Malta. In continental Europe, bold experiments in ‘architectures of the night’ confronted visionary architects before the 1920s. Some claim the very first big-scale breakthrough to have been the floodlighting of Strasbourg cathedral on Armistice Day – November 11, 1919.

The Opera House floodlit in the 1930s.

By the 1930s, the fashion had started catching up in Malta too, almost at the exclusive service of state celebrations. Locally, it first appears as blanket lighting, shorn of the subtleties, contrasts and nuances that already challenged the more creative light engineers in the outside world, whose aim was to turn buildings into night sculptures.

Floodlighting actually perverts nature

In daytime, most of the light pours from top to bottom – shadows, which actually define and model what we see, profile architecture as light floating on shadow. With floodlighting, this ‘natural’ order is inverted: the source of light being generally at a lower level, shadow forms lids on brightness. It is mostly in sports stadiums that the natural order is respected.

A postcard by Geo Fürst on the occasion of the 1935 Jubilee showing various prominent buildings in Malta floodlit

Another Geo Fürst postcard on the occasion of the 1935 Jubilee.

St Paul’s Anglican cathedral, floodlit in the 1930s.

Mosta Dome. Postcard published by J.M. Cordina

NATO Building and War Memorial. Postcard published by J.M. Cordina

Senglea Gates. Postcard published by J.M. Cordina

Earlier photography of floodlit buildings presented its own difficulties. The camera would not cope easily with the violent differences between blinding light and total darkness and this often resulted in unsatisfactory under- or over-exposure, through which detail suffered.

I have chosen some examples of pre-World War II floodlight photography from my collections. Geo Fürst, the superb German photographer who made Malta his home in the interwar years, takes pride of place with some pioneering shots. I am bending my self-imposed rule (only pre-1940s images) to include some post-WWII photos from the rare series of Independence ‘floodlight’ postcards published in 1964 by J.M. Cordina.