Department of Information marks 50th anniversary (3)
A hundred words in one print
George Cini
The first visit to Malta of Pope John Paul II was the first time when the DOI turned to digital photography.Turu Cutajar, one of the photographers at the Department of Information in the 1970s, recounts to George Cini some of the pros and cons of being behind the camera.
Mr Cutajar still remembers the first time he boarded a helicopter. "We had to take out a personal insurance policy before flying. God forbid anything would go wrong once on the helicopter. It was between 1975 and 1976, when Dom Mintoff was Prime Minister, and our task was to take aerial shots of government housing estates".
Mr Cutajar had been a salesman for 17 years but was laid off and he joined Dirghajn il-Maltin, a corps set up by the Labour government to mop up unemployed people.
Members of the corps, run by the army, were paid £12 every fortnight, "more as a form of pocket money than a wage", Mr Cutajar is quick to add. Every entrant to the labour corps had to give three preferences of the sort of work he wanted to be trained in.
"My first preference was telecommunications; photography was the second choice and agriculture, the third choice.
"I had for a long time been interested in photography. I remember taking transparencies and projecting them onto a wall by means of a hand-held battery-operated torch.
"I still have the first camera I bought, a Brownie that cost under £10. We used to go on hikes and I took a lot of pictures, especially landscapes.
"I kept buying the new camera models that became available on the market and I ended up taking pictures at weddings. At home I have a showcase with all the cameras I bought over time.
About four years after joining Dirghajn il-Maltin, a call for photographers was issued and Mr Cutajar sat for an examination, together with six other applicants. They were all successful and were taken on as photographers with the DOI.
Since then, and even before, Mr Cutajar has taken loads of photographs.
"I'd be lost if you had to ask which of my pictures I like best but hanging on one of the walls at the DOI in Valletta is a 20 by 24 inch print of a sunset I had shot."
Mr Cutajar recalls the time - Toni Pellegrini was director of the department then - when he had to take pictures during a reception where the guests included silver screen actors Lee Marvin and Roger Moore both of whom had played a part in the film Shout at the Devil that was shot in Malta. From the reception hall he had to rush to the dark room to print copies for both the Maltese and the international media.
"When the RAF Vulcan plane caught fire mid-air and crashed in Zabbar most of the photographers were at the UpperBarrakkaGardens, in Valletta having their lunch break.
"I remember looking at my watch - it was 1.10 p.m. - and somebody said: 'Let's go back to work, because it's time'. As we headed back to the office, we heard a big explosion and looking across GrandHarbour realised something was very wrong in Zabbar.
"Four of my colleagues - Joe Bartolo, Gino Theuma, Ronnie Muscat and Benny Zaffarese - rushed to Zabbar while I ran to the dark room to prepare the developer, the fixer and the photographic paper to have everything ready and have the pictures printed as soon as they returned.
"The department had to have a record of the crash because the government would want to see what claims it would make to the British authorities in order to get compensation for the damage caused by this air tragedy.
"Another nerve-wracking time was the hijacked Egyptian airliner that landed at Luqa although at that time I was assigned duties in the dark room which, in a way, was my forte.
"Benny Zaffarese taught us a lot of the technique and I learnt how to retouch black and white prints by means of a piece of charcoal in the form of a thick cigar we referred to as fahma. We used a brush with about four bristles which we would wet with our own saliva and retouched the photographs, taking care to match the half tones. This practice we called ittektek.
"We selected what we felt were the best shots and produced 10 by 8 inch prints of them."
The work load was such that eight photographs were barely enough to cope. Their assignments were many and varied and they had to adapt to different situations and deal with subjects of all sorts and attitudes.
"The first thing they tried to impress on us was that when shooting personalities, the most important moment was the handshake. There were times when you miss the handshake and you get a good telling off for failing to do so.
"Once I was briefed to stay just inside the entrance to the President's Palace in Valletta to take pictures of Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and their children during a call on the President. But I took the initiative to go up to the room where the meeting was to be held and I shot the whole family together with the President. I got no pat on the back for taking that initiative.
"You do get excited when you are briefed to shoot important personalities particularly visiting dignitaries.
"During the visit to Malta by the US President George Bush (Snr) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev there was a posse of photographers jostling to get a good position when the two leaders landed in a helicopter next to the Central Bank at Castille Place, Valletta. But how could we get a full frontal picture if we were all on one side of the two politicians, I wondered. So at the top of my voice I shouted: Mr President, Mr Prime Minister. Both leaders turned, smiled and waved at us. But when I got back to work, I was told: 'That's it, you're not going to do any more shooting today'.
"During the (first) visit to Malta by Pope John Paul II, I was briefed by Mimi Robinich to stand by St John's Co-Cathedral, in Valletta and shoot a couple of pictures.
"You go out of your way to get a good picture. So, as soon as I saw the Pope being escorted into the cathedral, I squeezed myself in, receiving a few jabs in my stomach from the crowd of minders. However, I managed to wind my way to the Oratory where the Pope was viewing the Beheading of St John the Baptist by Caravaggio."
Being behind the camera means just that, being out of the limelight. "An album containing photographs of their visit was presented to dignitaries just before their departure. Alas, the albums did not carry the names of the photographers who took the pictures and neither the Department of Information was mentioned. What a pity!," Mr Cutajar said.