RICHARD ELLIS EXHIBITION
So pleased to have visited Malta while a Richard Ellis Exhibition was on display. The exhibition was held at St.James Cavalier, Spazju Kreattiv, in Malta’s capitol, Valletta.
Thirty large prints taken from Richard’s extensive archive were exhibited. The exhibition was curated by Charles Paul Azzopardi and Ian Ellis.
They included formal portraits in the Ellis studio featuring military men in uniform, wedding brides etc. A great use of backdrops and placed furniture to create the compositions. The detail was exquisite. Several photos captured grand events featuring hundreds of people on Valletta’s waterfront. Some of my personal favourites featured street scenes and everyday people. Particularly, Gozo. A snapshot in time of a bygone era.
Also on display. Several original cameras and related photography equipment. All positioned in front of a large photo on one wall featuring the studio. It created the illusion that you were in the studio with the photography equipment around you. I thought this worked particularly well.
Finally. A box of touch up paints and brushes for tweaking and enhancing glass slides was on display. This brought a smile. The original photoshop!
WHO WAS RICHARD ELLIS
Richard Ellis was a British-Maltese photographer who was one of the pioneers of photography in Malta during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in St. Luke’s, East London, he travelled throughout Europe as a circus performer before settling down in Malta at the age of nineteen. Within a few years he had opened a studio in Valletta and he became a renowned photographer. His archive of tens of thousands of photographs still exists, and his work is significant for both its historic value and technical quality.
Throughout his decades-long career, Ellis created an archive of around 36,000 to 40,000 photographs, which document Malta’s history during the last few decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. These record buildings, views and events, and they also show social change. So inspiring!
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