Images by Geo Fürst

The publication of Nostalgias of Malta - Images by Geo Fürst from the 1930s was the result of several happy coincidences, the main one being the discovery by Wilfred Pirotta of a very large cache of about 1,000 small-format original photographs by Geo Fürst. Instead of keeping them close to his chest, Pirotta made them available to Giovanni Bonello, who certainly needs no introduction to all book lovers in Malta, and beyond.

Thus Bonello has now given us a publication… with a difference. This time he has not brought together studies of his own making; he has invited his readers to participate in the enjoyment of the excellent oeuvre of one of the best photographers our island has hosted: Fürst, who practically had no equal.

The book is split into four sections: The Sea, People, Events and Towns and Villages.

Bonello has done precious work in drawing up a biography of Geo Fürst (whose name was actually Johann). Born in 1888, Fürst, came to Malta most probably in his early 20s. Some time before the start of the First World War, he was employed as secretary to the German consul. He was soon interred with several other Germans at Verdala Barracks, where he was to spend five years and where, it is said, he had his first lessons in art as a means to kill available time. He was to become quite a proficient painter and by 1922 he was writing to his mother-in-law in Malta that he was selling his pictures steadily in Munich. Like so many foreigners who come under the spell of the Maltese Islands, Fürst could not wait to return (with his Maltese wife Helen ‘Lily’ Debono whom he had married in 1912) as soon as he got the relevant permit from the British authorities. On the island, he must have at first put his artistic abilities to use, painting a few seascapes with ships, before turning to photography, in which art he was to discover his real calling. Armed with a “standard Agfa camera”, as he put it, Fürst went round the island shooting thousands of pictures.

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