Emmanuel Sciberras

Noel Natale Emmanuel (aka Manuel) Sciberras was born in Msida. Manuel was interested in photography and he had garnered the basics through correspondence, literature, and trial and error. During the Second World War, Manuel saw service as an Air Raid Warden in the St Julian’s area and on the 1st of October 1942 was seconded to the Royal Air Force (RAF) as ground staff. Whilst there he further increased the skills needed to better his photography and darkroom work within the services, as some of his tasks were the processing and printing of the aerial reconnaissance photographs that the pilots brought back from their missions. This ‘education’ stood him well for when he eventually worked with photography in later years. On 28th August 1948, he was appointed as an instructor at the Government School of Photography, which at that time was at 14 Scots Street in Valletta. He remained there for a good number of years. Whilst with the civil service, he also did spans as a photographer at the Department of Information, at the Lotteries Department, the Royal Malta Library[3], and then, in 1960, at the new forensic laboratory then housed at the civil courts. There he was under Wilfred Flores. He is the grandfather of Mario Ciancio, who donated this collection.