Letizia Battaglia, Life, Love and Death in Sicily

Letizia Battaglia, Life, love and Death in Sicily is a new edition of Letizia Battaglia sono io, originally published for the exhibition in Italy in 2023 and now available in dual language paperback version to coincide with the exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery.

The book bears witness to Italian life and society with photographs from the historical archive of the great photographer. For about fifty years Letizia Battaglia photographed, observed and intensely lived her time and above all her city, Palermo. It is a tribute to her work, to her intense and new gaze, to her desire for freedom and to her always being a woman against the current. An uninterrupted album that goes from Milan to the face of Pier Paolo Pasolini, from the many deaths for the mafia to the unaware elegance of the little girls of the Cala district in Palermo; and then the religious processions, the faces of Piersanti Mattarella, Giovanni Falcone up to the ferocious boss Leoluca Bagarella. 

'It is always worthwhile to relate to people who are suffering, to talk about it, to make others share in the suffering of a part of humanity. But no matter what, it is also important to talk about happiness, to talk about life as a whole. Good stories and bad stories. But it is important to tell not only stories, also moments. Like little clouds." Letizia Battaglia