Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily at the Photographers Gallery

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, a war between the mafia families in and around Palermo, Sicily, led to hundreds of deaths. 

The Corleone clan decided to conquer the city by killing its rivals, along with dozens of police officers, judges and politicians who tried to stop that war.

Throughout this time, photojournalist Letizia Battaglia scoured the alleyways of Palermo, documenting the Mafia’s campaign of terror in her hometown, armed only with a Leica camera and a Vespa.

Her works will be showcased in Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily at the Photographers Gallery in Soho this Autumn.

The exhibition, which will run from October 9 until February 24, features some of Ms Battaglia’s most influential images, from 1971 to 2021.

Ms Battaglia began her career in journalism in 1969. She first picked up a camera at the age of 40, to draw more attention to her writing, but her focus changed.

She became the photo director at L’Ora, the daily newspaper in Palermo, and attended almost every major crime scene in the city until shortly before the paper closed in 1990. 

Later describing the process, she said: “I was with my bare hands, except for my camera, against them with all their weapons. I took photos of everything. 

“Suddenly I had an archive of blood. An archive of pain, despair, terror, drug-addicted youths, young widows, trials and arrests”.

Her work disproved the myth that the Mafia only killed each other and was critical in providing links between corrupt politicians and the Mafiosi.

She took around 600,000 pictures for the newspaper and received many death threats as a result of her work. 

In 2017, she said: “You no longer knew who your friends or enemies were. You left the house in the morning and didn’t know if you would come back in the evening.”

Ms Battaglia mainly photographed in black and white. She also captured daily life, women and children in their neighbourhoods and streets. 

Her pictures capture the poverty on the streets as well as the life of the upper classes, religious processions, festivals, funerals and more. 

Describing her photography of families and children living in the neighbourhoods of Palermo, she said: “I searched for their dream, to find love, adventures, peace, freedom, beauty, a fantastic future. In them I find myself as a child.”

Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily brings together vintage and new prints, archive materials and contact sheets, books, magazines and film.

Letizia Battaglia died aged 87, on April 13, 2022, after a long battle with illness.

Pictured top: The arrest of the ferocious Mafia boss Leoluca Bagarella (L’arresto del feroce boss mafioso Leoluca Bagarella), Palermo, 1979 (Picture: Courtesy Archivio Letizia Battaglia)