Photo Credit: Dragana Rankovic
Therese Debono is a Maltese photographer whose work examines how landscapes and built environments carry the traces of social, cultural, and emotional histories. Working at the intersection of conceptual documentary and research-based practice, she investigates how places become silent witnesses to transformation, memory, and erasure.
Through long-term photographic projects, Debono documents sites marked by absence, transition, and unresolved narratives. Her images often focus on the quiet surface of locations such as streets, buildings, interiors, and landscapes, revealing how the physical environment absorbs and reflects human events over time. Rather than depicting events directly, her work approaches place as an index of what has occurred, allowing the landscape itself to function as a form of testimony.
Debono lectures in photography and visual culture at MCAST and the University of Malta. Her practice frequently engages with themes of spatial memory, civic trauma, and the politics of place, examining how architecture and landscape shape identity and collective experience.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and has received several awards, including recognition from the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers and the Premju ghall-Arti by Arts Council Malta. In 2026 she will present her projects Blank and In Place. Where the Land Holds as part of the Malta Biennale.
I am a member of Women Photograph.
CONTACT
For print sales, interviews, and anything else kindly contact me on therese@theresedebono.com
I promise to reply as soon as possible!
Therese
2026
Malta Biennale 2026 Artist Blank, Ggantija Temples, Gozo. In Place. Where the Land Holds, Muza
Falcon Award - Best Work, Malta Biennale 2026 (shared award).
Shortlisted, Athens Photo Festival Open Call
2024
Honourable Mentions (3 images), Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers – PRO Section
Spaces in Suspension selected for exhibition at Urban Photo Awards, Trieste Photo Days Festival
2023
Winner – Premju ghall-Arti, Arts Council Malta, Best Visual Art Production (Spaces in Suspension, with Joe Smith)
Shortlisted – Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize
Shortlisted – Hellerau Portrait Awards, Dresden
Honourable Mention – Cities to Be Award
Honourable Mention – Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers
Collective Exhibition MARA, Bureau Iniala, Malta
Member – Women Photograph
2022
Winner – Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, People Category
Winner – Master Architecture Awards, Interior Architecture Photography (Images from Spaces in Suspension)
2021
Exhibition Spaces in Suspension, Spazju Kreattiv, Malta (with Joe Smith)
Honourable Mention – Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers
Work selected for the National Archives of Malta permanent collection
Work included in the Muża – National Museum of Fine Arts national collection (Uncovering Transition)
2020
Collective Exhibition Art+Feminism, Spazju Kreattiv, Malta (Brides on Beds)
Participation in TNAX Outdoor Exhibition, Valletta Cultural Agency
2019
Collective Exhibition with Canon Europe, Matera
2016
Participation in Mdina Biennale, Malta
2015
MFA End-of-Year Exhibition, Spazju Kreattiv, Malta
Book publication Passing By, Ede Books