Award-winning photojournalist Darrin Zammit Lupi has been awarded the Gold Medal 2025 by the Malta Society of Arts (MSA), in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to photographic art” and his “significant work in the field of journalistic photography.”

Through his continued dedication, said the MSA, Mr Zammit Lupi “has strengthened photographic practice in humanitarian and social contexts, both in Malta and beyond.”

Taking to social media to announce the news, Mr Zammit Lupi said he is “deeply honoured, truly humbled, and more than a little lost for words.”

In a career spanning more than three decades, he has worked with The Malta Independent, Times of Malta, and Reuters, covering war in Bosnia, natural disasters in Southeast Asia and Italy, revolt in Libya, the sinking of the Costa Concordia, and migrant emergencies in the central Mediterranean and Ukraine.

Migrants at sea / Darrin Zammit Lupi

The MSA described Mr Zammit Lupi’s long-term documentation of irregular migration across the Mediterranean Sea as “one of the defining threads” of his career.

“Since the late 1990s, he has been on the front lines – aboard rescue ships, in overcrowded boats, and inside detention and open centres – recording the human face of migration,” said the MSA.

Migrants at sea / Darrin Zammit Lupi

“His photographs, often stark yet deeply humane, chronicle exhaustion, relief, and quiet dignity amid upheaval.”

Bosnia / Darrin Zammit Lupi

His dedication has earned him numerous honours, including the Yannis Behrakis International Photojournalism Award (2021) for a personal photo essay on his late daughter’s battle with cancer; Malta’s National Photography Lifetime Achievement Award (2022); Photographer of the Year by The Societies in the UK (2016); the Mediterranean Journalism Award in Photography from the Anna Lindh Foundation (2017); the Refugee Festival honorary prize in Norway (2023) for his long-term documentation of migration; and fifteen awards at the Malta Journalism Awards.

His work for Reuters has appeared in TIME, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Guardian, Paris Match, Geo, Der Spiegel, and many others.

Mr Zammit Lupi also holds a Master’s with distinction in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the University of the Arts London.

Gold Medal Award History

In a private ceremony on 26th January, Darrin Zammit Lupi will be conferred the Gold Medal Award by President of Malta Myriam Spiteri Debono.

The first Gold Medal given by the Malta Society of Arts was in 1896, when it was awarded to Emidio Vassallo for his achievements in metal engraving. Past recipients of the Gold Medal Award over the past 127 years have included illustrious names like Sir Temi Zammit (1904), Robert Caruana Dingli (1916), Emvin Cremona (1963), Oreste Chircop (1997), Richard England (1984), Joseph Calleja (2007), Karmen Azzopardi (2009), Harry Alden (2013) and Carmine Lauri (2015), among others.