Letizia Battaglia: Photography as a Life Choice

A 30-year survey on the photography of this fearless Italian chronicler of the Mafia and more, as profiled in the acclaimed 2019 documentary Shooting the Mafia

Over 300 newly published works by Letizia Battaglia (born 1935), one of Italy's most celebrated photographers, are collected in this major new survey spanning the entirety of her 30-year photographic career. In photographs and contact prints from Battaglia's own archive, the book offers a comprehensive review of her work's civically engaged model for photography, typified by her iconic depictions of political protests and Mafia killings in her native Palermo in Sicily, taken while Battaglia was employed as photography director at the leftist daily newspaper L'Ora.

Including portraits of subjects such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, the mob boss Leoluca Bagarella and the Sicilian politician Piersanti Mattarella (assassinated by the Mafia), the photographs in this collection showcase Battaglia's attention to the most decisive events in Italy, both political and cultural, along with non-newsworthy records of the daily lives of people in Palermo.