Letizia Battaglia

Photographer

LETIZIA BATTAGLIA, who has died at 87, was an Italian photographer who documented the arrests of Mafia bosses and the bodies of their victims.

Much of her work, predominantly in black and white, explored the everyday lives of those who lived in Palermo’s poor neighbourhoods where Cosa Nostra bosses held sway.

Among her noted photos was that of the body of Sicily’s assassinated governor being held by his brother – who 35 years later would be elected President of Italy.

Battaglia recounted how, on January 6 1980, she raced to the scene of a fatal shooting of a man in a car and began photographing it, before she knew who the victim was. Only later would she learn the deceased was the governor, Piersanti Mattarella, and that one of the men rushing to hold his body as it was removed from the car was his brother, the current president, Sergio Mattarella.

Asked about that photograph, Battaglia would say that while she captured a scene of death, for her it represented a moment of hope as Sergio Mattarella would have the resolve and courage to follow a political career and later hold Italy’s highest office.

Born in Palermo on March 5 1935, she married at 16 and had three daughters. In her 30s, she began taking photographs in Milan but was then hired by a Sicilian newspaper to work in Palermo. Her work was published by the big Italian weekly news magazines L’Espresso and Panorama.

Ms Battaglia also spent several years in politics, serving as Palermo culture commissioner during one of Mr Orlando’s earlier administrations.