Sergio Muscat Photography

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while now. Last year I had the honour of being photographed by Corsican photographer Antoine Giacomoni. Giacomoni has been photographing rock stars for the past few decades (although being photographed by Antoine does not in any way imply that I am one). He still photographs with film, and the process is actually so fascinating that when given the opportunity I immediately wanted to experience it.

Giacomoni uses a square make-up style mirror, encircled with old-fashioned light bulbs. He photographs his subjects through the mirror, dressed in black to disappear into the darkness lest he is of distraction. “Relax, look straight into the mirror and think of something nice” he says before removing the Jablo block covering the mirror. He does wait a few seconds before revealing what’s beneath the cover – enough time to build a certain anticipation, curiosity even.

When looking into a mirror, we rarely ever do it consciously – we’re busy with other things and the mirror is just a tool of convenience. Remove that convenience, and the image that we see in front of us is that of vulnerability. “Look straight into your eyes”, he says. And I’m sitting there, looking deep into myself, trying to understand who I am, what has led me to this specific moment in my life. I can barely stand it – I’m anxious, but after a while I start getting familiar with the person on the other side, and relax. It takes but a few minutes and maybe four or five snaps – that clunky mechanical sound modern-day has forgotten. Then it’s over. I’m back, and life goes on. But that was deep – uncomfortably so. I loved it.

It took a few months – I had almost given up ever seeing the result. We’re used to seeing the result instances after the act, today. It makes us impatient. Then one day it arrived. I love it.

Read more about Antoine Giacomoni here.

Seems like lately I’ve been doing quite a few events. It is summer after all, and it is a great way to spend an evening. This time I’ve managed to squeeze myself into the Malta Jazz Festival, which after a few years went back to its original location and more importantly, its original format. Unfortunately I was only able to attend one of the evenings, however here are some photos from the great Cuban band Maracas, who managed to get everyone dancing in the end!

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This series of photographs was taken during the local production of the Masters of Dirt event, which features mainly freestyle motorcross. It is however set up as a very elaborate and entertaining show, featuring, amongst others, pyrotechnics and the ever-popular “fire girls”.

The event was highly interesting, and also a challenge to photograph, due to the sheer speed of the show’s pace.

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Ghanafest is a folk music festival held annually, and this year, the organisers were kind enough to have me take a shot at it (no pun intended). When you’re under the stage with relatively static singers, while the 6-or-so cameras of the local TV station keep yelling to get out of the way, its not straight forward to produce something interesting. However, if the organisers wanted something unusual, then I should give it to them. So I slowed down the shutter, loaded the flash and introduced some motion. My view is that when going for motion, it has to be extreme, otherwise it seems like a mistake, apart from not achieving the desired effect. It verges into abstract, but I just love it when you can just about make out what’s going on. Takes some practice, and there’s still a long way ahead, but sometimes, I do get lucky too.

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When we remove the recognisable, the unseen becomes visible.

I have recently been involved in a very interesting project, which I will not reveal details of as yet (suspense!). What I can say is that it was a challenge, since, like most other things, the theme has been visited quite often. In these cases (and not only), is way too easy to fall into cliches and two-dimensionality, when on the other hand we want to engage the viewers and invite them to delve into the photograph – to feel part of it.

Although the theme might be brimming with emotion, as is this case, it is still challenging to find a way to strip off the “excess”, leaving only the bare essentials in the image. I speak on a personal level, however I am pretty sure that any photographer would be hard pressed to achieve this. The medium being photography is also another limit. I wanted to try to achieve my goal on-site, and not in post processing, since I felt that in this particular case, it was a little bit like cheating. I have absolutely no issues processing my photography until it has very little to do with what it looked like originally, however in this case, I felt that I should be true to the moment, which obviously made the whole exercise even harder.

I do not know whether I have achieved my goal. That is something which is up to the viewers to judge, however I can say that I am quite satisfied with the results. The theme in question involves movement (that’s quite a hint), so it was clear that I needed to portray that, since in the end, it is the subtleties in the motion, and the interaction between the participants that makes the image, and not the people itself. I searched for details in expressions, movements, sequences – trying to identify the subtleties that externalise the emotions which are being exchanged.

By now it might be clearer what the theme revolves around, however I will simply conclude with a couple of images. I will add more as they materialise. Comments, as always, are more than welcome.

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Looking back at these images, I can see the way the idea developed, from capturing the bigger picture, to a detail, and finally to a purely conceptual level, which although containing nothing much which is recognisable, still conveys the mood and emotion of the moment – or at least, that’s the intention. Each of these images has got its own value in my mind, and I am not stating that any one is better than the others. As it happens, however, a concept takes shape across time, leaving its milestones along the way. Each of them are equally important in order to reach the destination, if after all there is one to be reached.