STILL TIME
A 50-Year Retrospective by Joseph P. Smith at Valletta Contemporary
STILL TIME, a 50-year retrospective by Joseph P. Smith is an immersive exhibition spanning half a century of photographic practice. Opening at Valletta Contemporary this May, this exhibition will bring together Smith’s oeuvre into a distilled and curated presentation, inviting audiences to trace the full arc of his artistic vision. “This retrospective exhibition serves not only as a celebration of my artistic milestones but also as a testament to the evolving dialogue between the observer and the observed,” Smith says.
Curated by Lisa Gwen Chetcuti, STILL TIME is structured across four thematic strands that resist any fixed notion of time or place. Rather than a straightforward chronology, the exhibition invites viewers into something more fluid, a space where personal memory and collective recognition begin to blur. Smith’s photographs capture moments that feel suspended: neither fully past nor fully present, but continually reactivated through the act of looking.
Smith’s career is one of quiet, persistent achievement, with five portraits selected across three editions of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2014, 2015, and 2021. His work has received recognition from the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity Awards, a 2023 shortlisting for the BBA Photo Prize in Berlin, and two seminal documentary volumes, Survivors: The Ageing Population of Birgu, that have established him as one of Malta’s most significant voices in photographic storytelling.
For much of this time, the practice ran alongside a long professional life in public service. “Stepping away at sixty marked not an ending, but a renewal. It allowed for a fuller immersion in the creative process, a return to the essential rhythm that first drew me to the camera.” Today, art is no longer what Smith returns to after work; it is the ground on which he proudly stands on.
STILL TIME is an opportunity to engage with five decades of sustained photographic practice, and to consider the work of an artist whose contribution to Maltese and international photography continues to grow.
STILL TIME, until 20 June 2026, Wednesday – Saturday, 2pm – 7pm, at Valletta Contemporary, Valletta, Malta. For more information visit www.vallettacontemporary.com.
Supported by Arts Council Malta, The Farson Foundation and imageSystems.
