Darrin Zammit Lupi was born in Malta in 1968. He started his photography career with The Malta Independent in 1992, but decided to turn freelance shortly afterwards. After a year’s training with the National Council for the Training of Journalists in the UK, he undertook foreign assignments in Albania and war-torn former Yugoslavia, winning the BPC Award to Journalists 1993 for his Albanian work.
He joined Times of Malta in late 1996 where he remained until late 2016. He has been a Reuters contractor since 1997. He has won the Malta Journalism Awards for Press Photography seven times and the Sport Photography award three times, as well as a special award for Creativity in Photojournalism. The Societies for Photographers in the UK named him Overall Photographer of the Year for 2016, Media Photographer of the Year for 2013, Documentary Photographer of the Year for 2014 and Street Photographer of the Year for 2016.. He was also runner-up in the 2008 OSCE photo contest “Waterways of Life”.
In recent years, he covered the South-East Asia tsunami tragedy, the refugee crisis during the war in Kosovo, issues related to the Millennium Development Goals (with a particular emphasis on HIV/AIDS) in various parts of Africa, the earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, the war in Libya, the Costa Concordia disaster and several other national and international assignments.
His work for Reuters has been published in newspapers, magazines, books and online worldwide, and has featured in publications such as TIME, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Paris Match, Der Spiegel and others. He holds a Masters Degree with Distinction in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the University of the Arts, London.
In late 2014, he published his book ‘Isle Landers’, covering a decade’s work on irregular immigration and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean. He has exhibited the work from that collection in the national arts centre in Malta; at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France; at the Visa Pour l’Image Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France; at the Photo de Mer festival in Vannes, France; at the Centre Culturel de Rencontre Abbaye de Neumünster, Luxembourg; and at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in Ballarat, Australia.
In 2015, he published a book ‘Off the Job’, showcasing iPhone pictures he’d taken in between assignments or on vacation.
He has been invited to speak about his work and experiences regarding migration in Malta, the UK, Belgium, the USA and Australia.
Some of his works form part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Malta, as well as in private collections in different countries.
Islelanders 