Walking in the streets of Valletta in the 1950s, the sight of bombed-out buildings, remnants of homes, businesses and community spaces, were common well after the end of the war.

But while some clung to the safe familiarity of the past, other were looking to the future, with the foundations of an independent Malta being laid day by day.

Guido Stilon died aged 43.

This is the Valletta captured so prolifically and thoughtfully in the work of Guido Stilon.

The Guido Stilon collection, which has been digitised by the Magna Żmien project, is a prolific archive that documents Malta between the 1950s and the mid-1970s. While Stilon never exhibited his work while he was alive, the composition, technique and diversity of his photographs reflect a man who felt a compulsive need to document what he was seeing.

Stilon’s photography is the subject of the exhibition Malta in Transition, which will run at the Malta Postal Museum from February 11 to March 7.

Shot around 1961, this picture shows the courts of justice being built on the site of Auberge d’Auvergne, which had been destroyed by aerial bombardment during the war.

“When we first received the collection, we didn’t quite realise what it was going to be,” exhibition curator Letta Shtohryn told The Sunday Times of Malta.

“After digitising the first 40 or 50 family images I thought, okay, this is a personal collection. But then I kept going and I realised he was using a lot of typical techniques of analogue photography. All throughout there were signs of him actually being a professional and not just an amateur person who photographs his parents.”

According to Magna Żmien archivist Andrew Pace, research into the collection indicated that Stilon’s borderline obsessive and methodical documentation came mostly from his own initiative to see and capture Malta. Other times he was commissioned, such as at the 1963 archaeological dig at Tas-Silġ.

Republic Street

When we first received the collection, we didn’t quite realise what it was going to be

A Valletta native, Stilon’s collection shows that the capital city was one of his most intensely documented locations.

“I suppose Valletta was what was most logistically available to him since he lived there,” Ms Shtohryn said.

“But you can tell that he really liked Valletta and everything about it was of interest to him. It’s interesting because he was looking at the fabric of the city and capturing how diverse it really was. Because you have all classes of people, all sorts of professions living side by side. So that’s quite an interesting collection of humans in one place.”

Construction at Ta’ Liesse

Despite his fondness for his hometown, it doesn’t seem like Stilon sought to capture an idyllic sense of nostalgia, Mr Pace said, but had the skill as a photographer to take a step back and capture his subjects in all of its own character.

“His approach was interested in the past and interested in the future,” Mr Pace said.

“That’s really clear throughout, there’s no nostalgic gaze in his photos. Even if what we would describe today as nostalgic, there’s that thing in his photography that feels very present and contemporary of the time.

A workman gesturing during demolition and construction work.

Ms Shtohryn added: “The buildings that Guido photographed have meaning not only in their function but also in the social perception of space.

“The old City Gate, for example, was a hugely controversial project because it was tied so closely with the rebuilding of the Royal Theatre and also because people used to live there. There are a lot of interesting parallels with how we look at some construction projects today.”

Mr Pace said: “The subjects of his photos were monumental or institutional changes. He’s obviously seen Valletta being destroyed, but he was thinking, what’s going to come next? What’s going to replace that? Not just as architecture but as institutions.

“The law courts are very indicative of this. They are such a significant symbol of ‘we’re governing ourselves, we’re making our own laws’. For me that’s the most significant construction site in Valletta during his time.”

The fourth city gate was built between June 1964 and August 1965 to designs of the architect Alziro Bergonzo, in the Italian rationalist style.

The construction of City Gate