This month sees a number of global celebrities grace Palm Court Lounge at the Phoenicia, where they look wonderfully at home. They come in the form of a striking selection of photographs which ooze the glamour and X-factor that made these iconic faces into household names. They also, however, offer a glimpse of the people behind the famous facades, and that’s all because of trust they had in the photographer, Lorenzo Agius.
Agius was born in England to Maltese parents and so he is thrilled to holding a large retrospective of three decades of his photographers here in Malta in the autumn. This smaller collection Look at Me: A First Glimpse is just a tantalising taster of what’s to come later in the year, and it is also the first time his works have been exhibited on the island.
“It’s a great honour to be here and reconnect with my roots,” Agius explains. “My mother died when I was very young, and there has been a lot of tragedy in our family through war and separation [his paternal grandparents were amongst the first Maltese people to die in the Second World War, long before his own birth]. I think as you get older, you want to replace the pieces that are missing: being in Malta feels like coming home, even though I’ve never lived here. And I know that my parents would be very proud of me and what I have done with my life, even though they’re not around.”
Lorenzo started out shooting first still life before he moved into fashion photography with the occasional portrait. However, it was portraiture that really captivated him. “I love fashion and working with beautiful men and women, but portraiture is about telling a different kind of story. With portrait photography, you’re trying to get to the real person, to capture something more personal, more special.”
“It was making those connections that ‘got’ me,” he explains. That might be through talking about something that they can connect to, life, music or family and then when you strike up a conversation all of a sudden, it’s not work. It’s just two people talking.”
“Alternatively, I might give my subjects something to do, or we’ll act out something funny: generally actors love to do that as being someone else is what they’re all about!”
“I was in the entertainment industry working on film posters and the occasional magazine shoot for young actresses and young actors that no one had heard – back then – like Kate Winslet and Sandra Bullock, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman,” he grins.
Then in 1996 his career suddenly went meteoric when his work was pivotal in the marketing campaign for the iconic film Trainspotting, the film credited with launching the careers of Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Danny Boyle.
“Once that came out, everything went ballistic!” he laughs.
Agius’s talent was quickly recognised in America and he worked with magazines including Vanity Fair, most notably on a 1997 cover shoot for an issue called Britannia, which showed Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit on a Union Jack bed. This idea, he explains, was inspired by a well-known Rolling Stone magazine cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on a bed.
“Getting the right shot is almost like hunting,” Agius continues. “The best results are always about how experienced you are and how you manage the terrain and yet anything can change around you at any point! If you’re shooting celebrities, any celebrity, whether they are a politician or a musician, an actor or an artist, you have to be ready for the unexpected and that’s part of its appeal.”
That same year he also worked the Spice Girls to produce the cover for their film Spice World and shot at up-and-coming actors – like Daniel Craig and Helena Bonham Carter! – at the BAFTAs.
And so, Agius has photographed many of these celebrities numerous times, since the early days of their careers, and the trust they have in him allows him to take surprising and unusual photos.
“I once did a cover shoot for the Telegraph magazine when Ewan McGregor and Jude Law were the hottest boys in English acting,” he laughs, “and I suggested that we put them in bed together tongue-in-cheek as if they were Morecame and Wise or Laurel and Hardy. Jude wasn’t sure at first, but Ewan has total faith in my ideas after Trainspotting, and so they went with it. I also had to do a shoot for the inside pages and we created a scenario like an old married couple, with Ewan naked in the bath having a cup of tea and Jude sitting on the toilet the sporting life newspaper! They both loved it!
Ewan McGregor and Jude Law are just two of the celebrities on show in Look At Me: A First Glimpse at The Phoenicia this month, where they are joined by Jack Nicholson, Nicole Kidman, Helen Bonham Carter, Angelina Jolie, Bill Nighy and Will Smith.
This taster exhibition will be followed by a huge immersive retrospective at Spazju Kreattiv in the autumn. Both are curated by Charlene Vella.
