Over the years, a number of local and foreign photographers, writers and historians have collaborated with MIRANDA PUBLISHERS and contributed to their publications.

PHOTOGRAPHERS

ENRICO FORMICA
Born at Valperga (Italy) in 1955, Enrico Formica lives at Romano in the Canavese country, where he works as a photographer and graphic artist, and paints and plays the blues in his spare time. He has moved from hyperrealistic painting, where he gained recognition and won some prizes, to industrial and then emotional photography, a sculptor of light who can breathe life into both humble objects and mighty monuments.
His vast experience in the communication through pictures sector and his great sensitivity as an artist have inevitably turned his steps toward orbicular photography, the ultimate in photographic imagination that captures all we can see around us on a single picture. The results he has achieved have been such as to earn him well-deserved renown abroad.

DANIEL CILIA
Daniel Cilia was born in Victoria, Gozo, and has been taking photographs since the age of 13 when, self taught, he began to acquire the technical knowledge photography requires and study the influence of light on everyday life. Cilia always insists that photography is not about equipment but about the quality of light. His first major exhibition was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta in 1986, the year he was awarded the LRPS (Licencate of the Royal Photographic Society). This enabled him to leave the nursing profession and move to Florence, Italy, to work full time in photography. Since then Cilia has lectured at the National College of Art, Crafts and Design in Oslo, Norway, and headed the Photographic Department at the Art Institute of Florence from 1990 to 1995. His work has been exhibited and published in many countries. In the last 10 years Cilia has specialised in editorial photographic design.

KURT ARRIGO
Kurt Arrigo is an artist, an adventurer and a lover of the outdoors. His free spirit is vivid in his work, as his creative eye constantly seeks the unexpected. His versatility behind the lens allows him to work within several sectors such as fashion, sport, underwater, architecture, outdoor and commercial photography. His photography captures the moods of how he loves to live life and exercise his passions.

JONATHAN BEACOM
Jonathan Beacom is Maltese, and is a full-time professional photographer. He has, over a period of fifteen years, been responsible for photographing major advertising campaigns for Malta’s leading agencies, hotels and businesses. His work is published regularly in Travel journals, magazines and brochures. Jonathan spent two years freelancing for the London based Hello Magazine, which specialises in photo-interviews of the rich and famous. His photographs of top film and music celebrities taken on location in Paris, Barcelona, Cairo, Ibiza, St. Tropez and London have been published worldwide.
More recently, he has ventured into the photographic publishing field, and most of his time is now dedicated to taking photographs for his successful range of postcards, calendars and books on the Maltese Islands and, more recently, Tunisia. His favourite subjects are landscapes, travel and aerial photography, as well as photographing cats for his popular ‘Cats of Malta’ Calendar. Published works to date include: Malta – The Hidden Charms, The Maltese Islands from the Air, Tunisia – A Travel Portrait and Malta – A Travel Portrait.

AUTHORS

GEOFFREY AQUILINA ROSS
Geoffrey Aquilina Ross is a Malta-based journalist and writer. For many years in Britain, he was a London magazine journalist and a columnist on London’s Evening Standard.
He also edited national magazines and was the concept editor of FHM, one of today’s most successful international men’s magazines. He has written and edited a number of travel books and an amusing study, How to Survive the Male Menopause, that was translated into many languages. He lives in London and Malta.

NICHOLAS DE PIRO
Nicholas de Piro was born in Malta in 1941. He was educated in England and has paid many mind-broadening visits to France and Italy in particular. He is the author of The International Dictionary of Artists who Painted Malta which has become a standard reference work. His poems have appeared in book form under the name of Picking through the Stones. The Mid-Med Bank published his historical study From Sovereign Principality to Fortress Colony in 1991. The Ministry of Tourism and ‘Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti’ jointly sponsored The Sedan Chair in Malta in 1993. The Malta Government in the same year published an illustrated study of The Auberge d?Aragon. He has collaborated with the photographer Daniel Cilia in five of Miranda’s books – Valletta, Mdina, The Temple of the Knights of Malta, Malta-Influence and Patronage and The Sovereign Palaces of Malta. He has made contributions to art and history publications and is the compiler and co-author of Costume in Malta and a humorous book called Lost Letters, which was published in London.
De Piro was curator of a Grade 1 historic house in Gloucestershire for 14 years organising restoration, concerts and exhibitions. He was elected to the committee of the Poetry Society of Cheltenham. After 17 years of living abroad, he returned to his native Malta with his English wife and family of four children to settle in Valletta where he has restored and opened Casa Rocca Piccola, a patrician Maltese House and Costume Museum, to the general public. He is a founder member of ‘Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti’, a member of the Committee of Privileges of the Maltese Nobility, Rector of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Rosary and a Council member of the Maltese Association of the Order of Malta.

STEPHEN C. SPITERI
Dr Stephen C Spiteri Dipl. (Int. Des.) RI, B.A. (Hons), Ph.D, was born in Malta, 15 September 1963. Educated at St Aloysius College, B’kara and later at the University of Malta, he has recently finished reading for his Ph.D. degree in the art of fortress-building. His interest in the military aspects of Maltese history has led to a number of books and papers on the fortifications of Malta and on the military organization of the Knights of St John. Foremost amongst these are Fortresses of the Cross (1994), British Military Architecture (1996), The Fougasse – the Stone Mortar of Malta (1999), Fortresses of the Knights (2001), Armoury of the Knights (2003), and The Great Siege: Knights vs Turks, mdlxv (2005).
Dr Spiteri works in heritage conservation. He served for a while as Acting Curator of the Armoury in the Palace of the Grand Masters, Valletta. He is a founding member of the Sacra Militia Foundation for the Study of Hospitaller Military and Naval History. He is currently Superintendent of Fortifications in the Restoration Unit, Works Division, Ministry for Resources & Infrastructure.

REUBEN GRIMA
Reuben Grima was born in 1969. He studied archaeology at the University of Malta and the University of Reading. The award of a Commonwealth Scholarship by the Association of Commonwealth Universities in the United Kingdom enabled him to continue research at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, for which he received a Ph.D. from the University of London.
Dr. Grima is presently the Senior Curator of the World Heritage Sites Unit at Heritage Malta, which manages the Maltese prehistoric sites inscribed on the World Heritage List. He joined the Archaeology Section of the Museums Department as an assistant curator in 1992, working mainly in the fields of archaeological site management and underwater cultural heritage. He formed part of the team that delivered the Hypogeum Conservation Project in 2000.
He has contributed several papers and book chapters to scientific as well as popular publications, and authored The Archaeological Illustrations of Charles Frederick Brocktorff. His present research interests include the landscape context of Maltese Late Neolithic monuments, and the creation of archaeological narratives that are accessible to wider audiences.