A life of risk to unveil Sicilian underworld
Letizia Battaglia, a Sicilian photojournalist who risked her life to document the brutal crimes of her Italian island’s notorious Cosa Nostra Mafia, died April 13 in Cefalù, near the Sicilian capital of Palermo, her hometown. She was 87.
The Associated Press reported her death, citing an announcement by officials including Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando, her longtime friend. The cause was not immediately available.
Battaglia, a one-time reporter who started taking photographs only in 1974, shortly before her 40th birthday, focused her lens on the bloody feuds between the various Cosa Nostra crime families in Sicily, including the Corleone clan from the small town of that name outside Palermo.
Although Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel “The Godfather” about Don Vito Corleone and the subsequent Francis Ford Coppola “Godfather” movies were fictionalized, the Corleonesi were real Mafiosi in Sicily, named after their town rather than a family. (The grandparents of actor Al Pacino, who starred in the “Godfather” films, were from Corleone.)
Battaglia covered the inter-family feuds mostly by photographing the bodies of victims. These included rival Mafiosi, corrupt politicians, businessmen and often innocents caught in the crossfire.
In 1979, well aware that she was putting her life on the line, Battaglia travelled to Corleone and exhibited giant prints of her photographs of Mafia victims in the main square.
Easily recognizable by her punky hair, which she dyed in colours including pink and purple even later in life,
She was one of the first female photographers to work for an Italian newspaper when she first picked up a camera in 1974 for the leftwing daily L’ora in Palermo. In following years, she shot around 600,000 images, which she called her “archive of blood.” She always shot in black and white.
Battaglia once told the German press agency DPA, “I am a messenger of resistance, resistance against violence, corruption, poverty, against moral and political chaos.”
Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo on March 5, 1935, and moved with her parents to northern Italy as a child. At 16 she eloped with and had three daughters.
Survivors include her daughter Shobha Battaglia, herself a well-known photographer.