In collaboration with Archivio Letizia Battaglia, the Italian Institute of Culture in Edinburgh is delighted to host in the new spaces of the Italian Institute of Culture at Italy House (20-22 East London Street, EH7 4BQ) from Friday, 21st February to Thursday 17th April 2025, the exhibition
LETIZIA BATTAGLIA
Chronicle, Life, Love
A selection of over eighty photographs by one of the greatest witnesses of her time. In Sicily, news photography, with which Letizia Battaglia made her debut around the mid-1970s, found itself having to live with and bear witness to the mafia wars that have bloodied that land for a quarter of a century, and Battaglia – the only woman to work in this field – records the horror of death with unwavering courage. Yet Battaglia’s gaze does not give in to the blood, and simultaneously passes over the original innocence, which is that of children and the defenceless: her photos, almost always taken in a context of social degradation, show hope and life that wants to flourish despite all adversity. Hence also the title of the exhibition: the chronicle surrenders to life, thanks to the feeling of love behind the camera. In every circumstance, even in the most tragic, there is a spark of hope, which is none other than the sense of love for life, hidden behind the condemnation of the violent chronicle of a land so tormented and so vital.
Curated by Marco Meneguzzo together with the Archivio Letizia Battaglia, of which he is a member, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a conspicuous number of illustrations, allowing an initial articulate approach to one of the most recent icons of photography.
LETIZIA BATTAGLIA
Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo on 5 March 1935. She began work as a journalist for the Palermo daily newspaper L’Ora in the late 1960s. It was here that she first experimented with a camera and became one of the first female photojournalists in Italy.
In 1971 she moved to Milan, where she had the opportunity to photograph the cultural flowering based around the Palazzina Liberty, and also intellectuals including Pier Paolo Pasolini and Franca Rame. Back in Palermo, she directed L’Ora’s photographic team between 1974 and 1991 and founded the agency Informazione Fotografica. During these twenty years Letizia Battaglia was one of the main reporters on the Mafia wars: she photographed some of the most significant episodes in Italy’s modern history including the murders of magistrates and presidents, and the arrests of Mafia bosses. She was also known for her sensitive depictions of Sicilian women, girls and children living in squalor and poverty. In the 1970s and 80s she attended the directing course at the Teatés theatre school run by Michele Perriera, directing plays and theatre workshops at the psychiatric hospital in Palermo.
Her sensitive reporting of current affairs earned her the W. Eugene Smith Award for Social Photography. Awarded in New York in 1985, she was the first European woman to receive it.
As someone active in the fight against the Mafia, she co-founded, together with her partner at the time, Franco Zecchin, the Giuseppe Impastato Sicilian Documentation Centre. In the 1990s Letizia Battaglia was a councillor in the Palermo council when Leoluca Orlando was mayor and was a regional deputy with Orlando’s party La Rete. In 1992, devastated by the assassination of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, she decided she no longer wanted to photograph Mafia crimes. She also became involved in publishing, founding the magazine Grande Vu, the publishing house Le Edizioni della Battaglia and Mezzocielo, a bimonthly magazine created and produced solely by women.
In 1999 in San Francisco, she was awarded the Mother Jones Photography Lifetime Achievement Award for documentary photography. In 2007 she received the Dr Erich Salomon Award from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in Cologne, Germany. In 2009 she was again honoured in New York with the Cornell Capa Infinity Award. Letizia Battaglia was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Peace Women Across the Globe and was the only Italian woman included by the New York Times among the eleven most representative women of 2017. In November of the same year, she founded and directed the International Centre of Photography in Palermo, located in the Cantieri Culturali della Zisa, where she curated exhibitions of contemporary photographers including Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas, Miron Zownir, Franco Zecchin and Weng Fen. She was invited to present meetings and seminars in museums, institutions, schools and universities in Italy and abroad.
In 2020 Letizia Battaglia carried out a photographic commission from Lamborghini for the advertising campaign ‘With Italy for Italy’. Between 2020 and 2021 she related the story of her life to her friend, director Roberto Andò, resulting in his two-part film entitled Solo per passione – Letizia Battaglia fotografa, broadcast in Italy on Rai 1 in May 2022. In 2021, together with her grandchildren Matteo and Marta Sollima, she founded the Letizia Battaglia Archive Association. Letizia Battaglia passed away in her home in Palermo on 13 April 2022, surrounded by her loved ones. The care of her archive has been entrusted to the Letizia Battaglia Archive Association.
Project conceived by the Italian Institute of Culture in Paris and promoted by Directorate General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy – Unit for the Coordination of Italian Cultural Institutes (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation).
Visits by appointment only (please email eventi.iicedimburgo@esteri.it to book). On arrival, you will be required to show a proof of ID (passports, driving license, Italian ID card only).
Please be aware that the exhibition includes potentially triggering content. This includes images of guns, murder victims, dead animals, police arrests/brutality, crime, blood, nudity and scenes of poverty.