Liminal – Photography by Gilbert Calleja

Authors:
Photography by Gilbert Calleja
Text by Matthew Vella

Price: €30

Paperback: 160  pages
Dimensions: 340 x 240 mm

Available at Kixott’s Bookshop, Mosta

Gilbert Calleja’s photographic documentary of the transgender community in Malta is a breakthrough publication that confronts the issues of a sub-culture that is struggling to assert itself in mainstream society. Calleja’s photographic work is informative as much as it is empathetic, never slipping into the obvious sensationalistic clichés of in-your-face photojournalism.

“We know we are close to some sexual frontier, to that chasm where meaning is about to break down. But we never know if we are really there. We want to know whether a man is a man, or a woman is a man, or if a woman is really a woman. But we don’t know: we think we are at the fault-lines of sexual identity, staring down at this chasm, this death of gender, this breakdown of meaning. Instead, Calleja’s work must make us reconsider: how important is it for us to know? Do we need this kind of finality?” – Matthew Vella