My father, Zvezdan Reljić, passed away on 22 December 2023 after suffering a massive heart attack a few days prior. He was 62.

A photographer and print-maker, he leaves behind a legacy of work that has attracted a myriad of admirers at different stages of the process. Because it wasn’t just the end product that drew a crowd. Through his film photography workshops, he slowly amassed a myriad of students who found in him an accommodating tutor, teaching them the ropes as he reignited his own passion for a vocation he had to put the wayside as he raised kids and kept a family afloat after emigrating all of us from Serbia to Malta in the early ’90s.

The black-on-white CV version of his life will tell you that his most notable works include the book Wiċċna / Our Face (2018) — a collection of portraits depicting the polychromatic reality of cosmopolitan Malta, gathering faces of those who were either born, settled or simply passed through this ancient but ever-transient island in the middle of the Mediterranean which our family made into a home, finally becoming fully naturalised citizens in 2012.

The CV would also then include a reference to his most recent achievement: the solo exhibition JA! JA! JA! at R Gallery in Sliema, the town in which he was still living at the time of his death, in the rented apartment of 3A, Panorama Flats, into which our family settled after a nomadic couple of years and for which I wrote this poem on the occasion of the exhibition’s finissage.

The CV would then also list his publishing venture Ede Books, responsible for some award-winning titles and latterly, the publication of hand-printed & pressed chapbooks: yet another manifestation of his DIY approach, coupled with his desire to discover and elevate fresh voices in the community, while also giving the more established players a welcome breathing room to experiment on the fringes.

The CV, and the established bio, would also necessarily have to mention that he served as president of the Kixott Cooperative; a small but vibrant cultural hub in the town of Mosta, which arose in 2019 as an endeavour by “my family and other animals” and went through various permutations and faced numerous challenges — the pandemic, in retrospect, being the least among them — but which survives as an events space, bar and small bookshop that consolidated the communal space which my father opened up to students and other artsy aspirants, after my siblings and I flew the coop, which we gradually did following my mother’s stroke and extended “exile” in a care home.

Many beautiful tributes have already been penned and some — such as this one by Seb Tanti Burlo and this one by Chris De Souza Jensen — have even been drawn. Our long-standing friend and colleague Matthew Vella wrote a beautiful obituary for MaltaToday, where both my father and myself worked for a long period of time, establishing both of our careers in the process. The piece is as impassioned as it is comprehensive, and collates the life and career in a way that only a seasoned journalist who is also a dear friend can manage.

Many will talk about how my father helped galvanise an artistic community, and that he offered a ‘safe haven’ for rootless yet artistically ambitious souls: both at Kixott and in his own home. It’s a beautiful image and memory to cling onto.

But of course, every romantic impression comes with the flip-side of harsh reality. And as his eldest son, along with the rest of the family, navigating my father’s legacy will be about accepting the challenges that some with the ‘public vs private’ aspects of it all… which were further complicated by his opening up his doors to so many people.

Going forward, there will be a lot to unpack. We need to ensure that his work survives, and is sheparded to the right places as carried by the right hands. (Being as accommodating as my father was meant that a few bad apples will, inevitably, slip through the net.)

But that’s yet to come. The smoke is still clearing. And after the tributes gradually recede, the silence will be deafening and the true work of grief will begin.