Letizia Battaglia

Photographer, activist and politician Letizia Battaglia (Sicily, 1935–2022) captured the harsh reality of life in Sicily in the shadow of the mafia. From the early 1970s, she recorded the impact of mafia rule on the Sicilian population and the suffering it caused. In her fight against organised crime, Battaglia wielded her camera as a weapon: as a photojournalist, she documented the daily terror and put it on the front pages of the daily newspapers. In total, she took more than 600,000 photographs, including images that are considered the most famous visual testimonies of the Mafia. Later, Battaglia continued her fight against the Mafia as a politician.

Life, Love and Death in Sicily is Battaglia’s first major retrospective exhibition since her death in 2022. It is produced by the Photographers’ Gallery in London (UK). 

The exhibition has been curated by Paolo Falcone in partnership with the Archivio Letizia Battaglia and the Fondazione Falcone per le Arti and is supported by the Fondazione Candido Speroni e Carla Fendi Speroni, the Italian Cultural Institute in London and Ambra & Antonio Gatti.