Three images among the thousands former Times of Malta photographer Frank Attard took in his long and illustrious career recount salient episodes in Malta’s colonial, maritime and political history.
In 1949, he took a picture of then Princess Elizabeth sitting on a bench with Prince Philip standing behind her in what was then their home away from home, Villa Guardamangia.
In the UK, the image caused a furore as the media interpreted the prince’s extended index and middle fingers as indicating they were expecting their second child, which they were.
But it also illustrates the happy and lasting bond between the two countries and their people. Throughout her long life and reign, Malta remained to Elizabeth II the “isle of happy memories” and to the Maltese, she was ‘the Queen’.
That picture, and the many others Attard took during the late queen’s six visits to Malta, record a salient part of the island’s history like no words can.
“I lost count. I have no idea how many I have... most likely, I have hundreds,” he answered when asked how many photographs he has of Queen Elizabeth II.
Sifting through those images may well add colourful and significant, hitherto unrecorded, episodes in the young royal couple’s stay in Malta.
The photographs he took are, indeed, a treasure trove of history, like those of the 1969 Greek tanker Angel Gabriel rescue operation in the area known as Siberia, Marsascala, and of a bleeding man who had used a small gun as he forced his way into Castille to speak to Dom Mintoff in 1979.
A few years back, an attempt failed to save Attard’s photographic treasures from getting lost, by including a selection in a book.
It would not only have paid tribute to a distinguished press photographer but also serve as a pictorial chronicle of events in Malta’s recent history. But it is still not too late.
True, many of the images he captured with his Rolleiflex camera, which he always carried with him, remain printed on various publications and newspapers both in Malta and beyond. However, his collection is so vast and varied it deserves a thorough study even by historians and researchers looking for details that could, and, no doubt, would shed new light on stories about which we think we know everything.
Somebody needs to take the lead, just like Ian Ellis had done when he put together the Richard Ellis Photographic Collection that depicts life in Malta between the 1880s and the beginning of the 20th century.
There have been a few exceptional and laudable initiatives to preserve photographs that can offer an insight into the past. Four years ago, Magna Żmien (Time Machine) was founded to promote the digitisation and preservation of audiovisual collections found in Maltese homes and to have a community archive accessible to researchers and artists.
After Peter J. Shield had donated about 350 photo negatives shot in Malta in the late 1950s, Heritage Malta digitised them, made them accessible to the public and invited the people to supply any information about them.
“One can look at old pictures with simple nostalgia. Yet, to the keen observer, aged images act as a portal to bygone moments which are rich with hidden details,” Heritage Malta rightly points out.
It has made an open appeal to anyone wishing to donate historical photographs and also personal narratives to get in touch.
Attard’s snapshots of Malta, which date back to the 1940s, no doubt tell their own story of this country.