An artist is trying to “save Malta via photography” by training her lens on an unwelcome modern architectural phenomenon: blank party walls.

Therese Debono is documenting the spread of these massive, white, windowless walls that blight views and even threaten heritage sites.

“The island will soon become one blank and nondescript canvas if what remains is not salvaged,” she warns.

The photography lecturer, who focuses on “endangered places” among other subjects, feels these bare high walls, the exposed sides of sprouting buildings, signify “wiping out and cutting off our roots”.

Her message: “Malta has now become blank.” Her hope? That her work will inspire those responsible for planning decisions to do their duty. She is both documenting views and places before they are lost as well as highlighting the “uninspiring” buildings that are leaving behind a “sense of void”.

“It is a protest against the massive edifices that are suffocating the village and town cores, taking over heritage at such a rapid pace that, soon, Malta’s characteristic architecture will become obsolete,” Debono says.

According to official design standards published in 2015, new buildings on the edge of development should fit seamlessly into the topography and not generate any blank party or rear walls.

Some recent examples of attempts to bypass such considerations include a plan to demolish a two-storey building in Mġarr and replace it with a four-storey block with blank party wall overhanging the World Heritage Site of Ta’ Ħaġret temples.

“We do not realise the extent of the damage but when these vistas of heritage value are lost, we lose touch with our roots,” Debono contends.

“I believe this is all happening on a subconscious level but it is happening and I am trying to show this via my photography.”

From art to activism

Every project begins as a personal journey for Debono but it can grow into activism.

“I was always aware of changes around me. However, in recent years, I have really been made more conscious of the loss we are experiencing.”

Following her thesis for a Master’s in cultural heritage, where she investigated how the spirit of a place can be documented via the photography medium, her research and her background as a draughtsman for 19 years made her “really realise how these changes affect us”.

Most people probably feel helpless about objecting to developments because whatever they do is not enough to stop them, Debono acknowledges.

“Look at any urban landscape and, inevitably, you will see the rise of the blank party walls all around. They have truly become a part of our landscape and the norm,” she points out, doubting anyone even noticed them any longer.

Debono, however, not only notices them while driving around the islands but also makes a mental note and returns to photograph them.

“There was a time when the church would be visible from all around the village/town periphery. It served as a landmark to find the way to the core of the place,” Debono recalls.

“Today, the satellites around the peripheries are nondescript apartment blocks, higher than the church, devoid of any value and blocking the core values of the locals – church for faith and village centre for community.”

A series of images of the view from her Żebbuġ home, taken in varying weather conditions, now lies in sharp contrast with a photo of its “obliteration in a flash” by a washroom.

“I started documenting the view from my old apartment’s balcony since we moved in 2018,” she says.

“It is a simple one: the top of the chapel of Our Lady of Abandoned Souls, known as Tal-Baruni, together with some palm trees that are not indigenous.

“When I woke up one day and noticed I could not see this view any longer, I was shocked, mainly at myself, rather than the washroom.

“We get so busy and distracted that we do not notice, until it is too late, that something has been lost.”