Letizia Battaglia (Bilingual edition)
By (Author) Letizia Battaglia
Contrasto
Contrasto
3rd February 2025
7th November 2024
Italy
General
Non Fiction
Paperback
192
Width 215mm, Height 290mm
1040g
A long journey through war fields
A visual witness of the social and political reality of our country, not only a "photographer of the mafia Letizia Battaglia (1935-2022) is recognized as one of the most important gures of contemporary photography. Her pictures firmly present in the collective imagination, but also for the civil and ethical value of her work. The book testifies to forty years of Italian life and society with more than 150 unpublished photographs, specimens and vintage prints from the great photographer's historical archive. An uninterrupted album that goes from the street protests in Milan in the 1970s to the face of Pier Paolo Pasolini, from the many deaths due to mafia, to the unconscious elegance of little girls in Palermo's Cala district; and then religious processions, the havoc of the Sicilian coastline, the faces of Piersanti Mattarella, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, no to the vicious boss Leoluca Bagarella. A 360-degree portrait to return the intensity that characterizes all Letizia Battaglia's work: from the photographical and political engagement, from editorial activity to theatrical and cinematographical activity up to the recent establishment of the International Center for Photography in Palermo.
Born in Palermo in 1935, Letizia Battaglia declined in many ways her commitment against crime: as a photographer, editor, alderman, environmental activist, advocate for human and women's rights. Her images, a fundamental piece in the history of reportage in Italy, earned her the prestigious Eugene W. Smith Award in 1985 and, in 1999, the Mother Johnson Achievement for Life. She passed away in Palermo on April 13, 2022, at the age of 87.