A big moment for Maltese photography! Darrin Zammit Lupi has been awarded the Gold Medal 2025 by the Malta Society of Arts, recognising a lifetime spent telling powerful stories through the camera lens.

From humanitarian crises and social realities to major world events, Darrin’s images have a way of stopping you in your tracks. Rather than merely capturing moments, they make the viewer feel them. Over the years, his work has helped shape how stories are told visually in Malta, while also reaching audiences far beyond our shores.

This latest honour celebrates not just his talent, but his empathy, resilience and deep commitment to photojournalism. Among his many accolades are the Yannis Behrakis International Photojournalism Award (2021), earned for a moving and deeply personal photo essay documenting his late daughter’s battle with cancer, as well as Malta’s National Photography Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Internationally, Darrin has also been named Photographer of the Year by The Societies in the UK, received the Mediterranean Journalism Award in Photography, and was honoured at Norway’s Refugee Festival for his long-term documentation of migration. Closer to home, his work has been recognised time and again at the Malta Journalism Awards, where he has taken home 15 awards over the years.

Today, his photographs form part of permanent collections at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Malta and the Human Rights Archive at Duke University in the US.

The Malta Society of Arts Gold Medal feels like a well-deserved nod to a photographer whose images continue to challenge, move and remind us why visual storytelling matters.

Congratulations Darrin!