Letizia Battaglia

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Letizia Battaglia and Franco Zecchin in Palermo, 1987

Letizia Battaglia (born March 5, 1935 in Palermo , Italy ) is an Italian photographer and photojournalist . Although her photographic work shows a wide spectrum of Sicilian life, she is best known for her outstanding pictures about the Mafia .

Life

Battaglia's birthplace was Palermo, but she grew up in Trieste until she was eight . The return to the Sicilian capital came as a shock for her because her father locked her up at home in the afternoon after the convent school. According to the traditions of the time, girls in Palermo were not allowed to play outdoors.

To escape it all, she married when she was 16 years old. The husband was heir to a regional coffee roaster manufacturer family. She gave birth to three daughters. She was denied the desire to study. After fifteen years as a “wife conforming to the traditions”, she suffered a nervous breakdown, a mental heart attack. Neither doctors nor psychotherapists could help her until she underwent psychoanalysis and decided to give her life a radical turn. She left her husband and took the children with her.

Battaglia went to Milan and started there as a cultural correspondent for the left-wing daily L'Ora . She came to photography because photos were required. In 1971 she was divorced. It was at this time that she met Franco Zecchin, who was significantly younger but became both her work and life partner for the next 19 years. Three years later she returned with him to Palermo as chief photographer and reporter for L'Ora . From 1974 to 1990, when the daily had to give up for economic reasons, followed a busy life in the service of photojournalism.

This was the time of the bloodiest Mafia wars in Palermo for supremacy among the various Cosa Nostra clans . The journalist was still listening to the police radio in the darkroom and was always one of the first at the scene of the shootings. At times there were several deaths almost every day, sometimes five different cases on the same day.

Battaglia then took around 600,000 black and white photographs that were always accurate . It documented the gangs' internal wars as well as their penetration and impact on civil society. Battaglia and Zecchin provided the international media with representative images of the Mafia violence. She felt like a mobile morgue at times. "Suddenly I had an archive of blood" she said in an interview.

Nevertheless, her photos are never paparazzi or sensational photos, but with their composition and thoughtfulness they meet the demands of high artistic quality. This is proven by the awarding of renowned, international photographer prizes.

Battaglia was also involved in environmental and local politics. For a few years she switched full-time into politics because she believed she could advance her cause of "an Italy liberated from the mafia". She worked under Leoluca Orlando on the Palermos city council and was a member of the anti-Mafia party La Rete .

At the beginning of the 1990s Battaglia became the municipal director for quality of life in Palermo. It enabled the city's first noteworthy support for culture after the Second World War and had a promenade with trees built by the sea, where previously there was an illegal garbage dump, and bench seats to be set up in the small piazzas. She made lasting contributions to the preservation and revitalization of the historic old town of Palermo.

Battaglia was also active as an entrepreneur with her own small book publisher Edizioni della Battaglia , where she published other photographers and authors. She was also the co-founder of a feminist monthly magazine called Mezzocielo . She also actively campaigned for the respect of the human rights of prisoners.

Awards

  • In 1985 Battaglia received the Grant in Humanistic Photography named after W. Eugene Smith .
  • In 1999 she received the Photography Lifetime Achievement from the International Fund for Documentar Photography .
  • In 2007, she received the highest German award for journalistic photography, the Erich Salomon Prize , at the Mannheim / Ludwigshafen / Heidelberg Photo Festival .

Books

  • Passion, Justice, Freedom - Photographs of Sicily. Aperture Foundation, Gordonsville (VA) 1999, ISBN 0-89381-888-7
    • Passion, justice, freedom. Sicilian photos. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-86150-316-6
      • Review of Marguerite Shore in PART, 2002 (engl.)

Documentaries, feature films

  • 2004: Daniela Zanzotto (script / director): Battaglia , 58-minute documentary, England 2004, premiered at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival 2004.
  • 2008: Wim Wenders : Palermo Shooting , personal short appearance in a 124-minute fiction film, Germany 2008, premiered on May 24, 2008 at the Cannes Film Festival.
  • 2019: Kim Longinotto (Writer / Director): Shooting the Mafia , 94-minute documentary film portrait about Letizia Battaglia, Ireland 2019, world premiere on January 25, 2019 at the Sundance Film Festival .

literature

  • Bettina Flitner : women with visions - 48 Europeans. With texts by Alice Schwarzer . Knesebeck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89660-211-X , pp. 28–31
  • Andreas Rossmann : The double tragedy of Letizia Battaglia. A woman against the mafia: New photos of the Italian in the Amsterdam gallery Metis. in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, September 13, 2009, p. 61
  • Rita Kohlmaier: Letizia Battaglia . In: Women 70+ Cool. Rebellious. Wise. Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-945543-76-4 , pp. 34-39.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna Maria Trevale: Grandi fotografi grandiflora Narratori - 15 Letizia Battaglia. Sul Romanzo , February 10, 2012.
  2. ↑ Vicky Goldberg: Testimony of a Keen Witness To Sicily's Enduring Sorrow. The New York Times , December 16, 2001.
  3. ^ A b Frank Hessenland: Mafia enemy with a camera. Deutsche Welle , October 1, 2007.
  4. ↑ The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund: Grant Winners ( Memento of the original from October 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.smithfund.org
  5. ↑ International Fund for Documentar Photography: Photo Gallery ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.allimage.com
  6. ^ German Society for Photography : Image material of the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize winner 2007 Letizia Battaglia ( Memento from November 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ KYTHERA Prize Winner 2019: Letizia Battaglia , kythera-stiftung.de, accessed on December 22, 2019.
  8. ↑ Battaglia in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  9. ^ Film details at the Brooklyn Film Fest 2005
  10. ↑ Almut F. Kaspar: The chronicler of the Mafia. stern.de from May 27, 2008.
  11. ↑ Documentary in the First: Shooting the Mafia , daserste.de from August 7, 2019, accessed August 8, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Battaglia, Letizia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian photojournalist, publisher and politician (La Rete)
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo