Pushing photography to the edge

American writer and thinker Susan Sontag died yesterday. She struggled with various forms of cancer for over 30 years including breast cancer. Her radicalism had an influential impact on generations of artists and critics including Maltese photographer Patrick Fenech. Inspired by Sontag's On Photography Fenech pioneered art and radicalism in Maltese photography. He gives an account of his career in this interview with Malta today:

In my young days I wanted to be independent quickly, so I got a job with a leading insurance company. I was very interested in the history of modern art and did a lot of drawing and painting with my dad and the late Esprit Barthet at the School of Art. When I was 20 my Indian girlfriend bought me a SLR professional camera for my birthday, and that was it. I'd found my medium. I set myself to learn the techniques of developing and printing and read "On photography" by Susan Sontag like mad. Now, I thought, I could really do some reasonably good photography.
An artist has to respond to his or her environment, current events, society, politics etc. I simply cannot sit down and paint pretty pictures. That is for Sunday painters. In the meantime there are other important issues to be dealt with, other media to use.

Read Susan Sontag's obituary.