Time Travel to Malta — A Journey Through Film Photography
Photographer Park Nahui visited Malta at twenty-three. Years later, the island lives on in sun-scorched film frames, and in the memory of a painter she met on Gozo and the dreams she can no longer recall.
Time Travel to Malta — A Journey Through Film Photography
A forgotten time, summoned by the landscapes of Malta on strips of light-burned film.
Words & Photos * Park Nahui
* Park is interested in beings, phenomena, and relationships that belong neither here nor there. She is drawn to images that leave room for imagination and interpretation, such as pictures with indistinct forms or black-and-white photographs whose original colors can no longer be known. She finds joy in capturing unexpected moments, or in recreating a scene in her own way.
Six years ago, I spent a year as an exchange student in a small village in Germany. During that time, I traveled to cities across Europe, including Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, London, and Amsterdam, and left behind film photographs of each. Once, I took on a solo New Year’s trip, and my destination was a small island called Malta. Back then, it was a rather unfamiliar destination that few people knew about.
After taking the ferry to Gozo Island, the first place I visited was Ta’Pino Basilica. Under a deep blue sky, fields the color of vanilla cream surrounded a small village. It was neither desert nor meadow, and “exotic” was not enough to describe the scene. Used to the similar-looking landscapes of Europe, I felt like Columbus discovering a new continent, and I stood speechless for a long while. I even wondered whether I had somehow traveled through time.
The shock lingered. I sat on the roadside humming songs, and I wandered down a remote path as if in a trance, only to find a place that seemed too good to be true. In a forest full of soft grass and trees stood a lone lookout tower made of bamboo. Without hesitation, I climbed the ladder, and the whole village came into view at once. I gazed at the scenery for more than thirty minutes. From that day on, I kept climbing high hills without rest, taking the crashing waves and fierce winds with my whole body, and I eventually came down with a terrible flu.
Because of that, I spent the remaining week drifting around in a medicated haze. Maybe that is why the photos I took then are all as hazy as a dream. I didn’t yet know how to handle a camera properly and often ruined film with light leaks, and that gave rise to several photographs with a peculiar feel, far removed from reality. Flipping through those deep blue, bright white, and blurry pictures, the memory itself seems like nothing more than a dream.
One person stands out vividly among those memories. While wandering through a village on Gozo, I spotted him in a small studio hidden between alleys. A white-haired man in black horn-rimmed glasses and a beret, he was absorbed in his brushwork. As I openly watched him through the window, he gave me a bright smile and beckoned me inside. I stepped in as if drawn by a pull, and we had a rather long conversation there.
He had worked as a designer in England for 35 years and came here after retiring. His carefree daily life felt like the future I dreamed of. When I boldly confessed that I wanted to live like him, he offered some plainspoken advice. “Now I do what I want to do, and I paint. When you do commercial art, you often end up working for other people rather than for yourself. You’re still young, so if you keep moving forward step by step from now, you’ll surely achieve your dream.”
Back then, I never dreamed I would make a living from photography as I do now, and his words seemed to drift past me without much meaning. Only now are they beginning to sink in. While putting this piece together, I looked up the Malta travel vlog I had made. In the video, I confess that I had fulfilled one dream. What was that dream? Honestly, I don’t remember at all. To me, now approaching thirty, the ‘twenty-three-year-old me’ feels like a stranger.
‘Sometimes, the me of the past looks like the person I want to be now.’
Looking at a note from that time that I came across by chance, I find myself nodding along. I just can’t recall what that person I wanted to be was. Like countless strips of film burned by light, memories also fade and crumble bit by bit. Sometimes they vanish without leaving a trace, too little to help me understand my past self. Looking at my out-of-focus face in the photo, I make a resolution: I will remember who I am now for a long time. * Just as I, six years ago, gazed endlessly down at the Cittadella, I must keep looking at the landscapes and people I love now, for as long as I can. And so I must forget as slowly as I possibly can.
* A historic fortress occupying the center of Victoria, the capital of Gozo. People have lived in this area since the Bronze Age, and it played an important military role from ancient Rome through the Napoleonic Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.
