Jazz Expressions

Artist in residence - Phoenicia Hotel malta, organised by Festivals Malta

Exposed to jazz music since a young age by her father, it was inevitable that the annual Malta Jazz Festival would be the ideal playground for Therese Debono to express herself through the medium of photography. She has been attending this festival since 1996 little knowing that in time, she would also photograph the great artists on stage. Even though Therese never took up music, jazz is still one of her favourite music genres and photographing the event is one of her yearly appointments.

​Jazz Expressions is a project initiated in 2010 featuring artists from the annual Malta Jazz Festival. The performers vary from local to foreign and feature in the iconic setting of Ta’ Liesse at the Valletta Harbour, Malta.

​In portraiture, a photographer merely tries to encapsulate the soul of the sitter in a single image. Documentary portraiture especially that of performing artists, calls for a totally different approach. American composer George Gershwin stated that jazz, like life, is best when improvised. Photographing jazz is also an act of improvisation. A portrait of someone is best caught when the sitter is unaware since raw facial expressions and hand gestures function purely in sync with the music rather than put on as an act for the audience.

Jazz expressions is a body of work that attempts to show the various emotions, and passion transmitted by jazz music.

The exhibition was hosted at Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta, Malta for the whole month of July 2021

More information here: https://www.phoeniciamalta.com/2021/07/28/artist-in-residence-therese-debono/

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