Letizia Battaglia, goodbye to the great photographer

We had heard her not long ago, even though she said she was tired. We liked to involve her every time, because her gaze was always able to catch something else. Her black and white photos of her always knew how to tell her stories of her Sicily: the poor neighborhoods, the children, the women as only she knew how to frame.

Letizia Battaglia she passed away (and we will miss her) at 87 years old.

Born in Palermo in 1935 Letizia Battaglia started working on the newspaper very early Time and very soon she also got married and had three daughters. She separated when it was still a scandal.

Letizia Battaglia talks about herself (without filters, as usual) in “Shooting the mafia”

In his life he has won many awards and exhibited his photos all over the world. She is also famous for her political commitment: from the co-founding of Giuseppe Impastato Documentation Center up to the position of municipal councilor of the Greens.

Mayor Leoluca Orlando he remembers her thus: «Palermo loses an extraordinary woman, a point of reference, an internationally recognized symbol in the world of art and a flag in the path of Palermo’s liberation from the government of the mafia».

No one like her has photographed a city and many battles, the one against mafia, that for the rights of women. Her photo of the body inside the car by Piersanti Mattarella, hers the image of the little girl with the ball. All in black and white. She, the only woman among many men, without frills, without rhetoric, in life and in the shots: “I have always felt like just a person who photographs”.

Among her many successes, in addition to awards, books, conferences and exhibitions around the world, the foundation of magazines such as Mezzocielo, made by women, and the direction of the Zisa International Center of Photography. To many he taught the trade, without ever pursuing the search for the beautiful image, but life. “Photographing some people was also giving them back their dignity,” she said in an interview. And again: «Photography is a part of me but it is not the absolute part».

Source: Vanity Fair

You may also like