Letizia Battaglia is difficult to define, but perhaps it is her surname that gives the most precise meaning to her personality (battaglia means battle in Italian).
Yes, because the most famous Italian photographer in the world has fought and won many battles, always with the extreme elegance of someone who is able to communicate without screaming, to tell stories without invading and to capture attention at the glance.
Letizia Battaglia is the photographer of the Italian mafia, of little girls and with pink hair. She is a feminist. One who really fought for women, who lived as a feminist, who as a feminist she lost and gained. One that was really a feminist (even if the Instagram bio didn't exist yet where she could announce it).
But I ask myself: is it a peculiarity to be so? Is the desire for equal rights a special feature? Ideally not! But it is courageous and commendable to have fought a lifetime to try to reach certain goals that society and the news show, even today and every day, have not been achieved.
Without too many other words, I would like to explain to you why each of us should know a little about Letizia Battaglia's life, so that hers too is imbued with courage and passion.
The desire for truth
Letizia Battaglia is known as a photographer of the mafia. The most famous shots, also used as evidence during the most important trials, were a fundamental complaint against a system unfortunately still well rooted in our country.
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Courage beyond fear
Just during the first period as an investigative photojournalist, Letizia Battaglia was able to expose herself through her shots against much stronger powers than her. For this reason the Italian state offered her the possibility of having security to protect her.
Battaglia refused, admitting even though she was very young that she was not afraid of anything. Even today, in a recent interview with “la Repubblica”, she admits that she is not at all worried about a probable diagnosis of cancer. When asked the reason for this indifference, with deafening simplicity she replies: “I don't know. Maybe because I love life?”
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The will to overcome trauma through art
Very often the photographer has told of having suffered a serious trauma at the age of only ten. Just as she was riding a bicycle carefree, she witnessed the image of an adult man masturbating in the middle of the city in front of her.
After she told story to her parents, she was segregated at home for years. No one has ever explained to her that on that terrible occasion, she was not the wrong one and this unfortunately created a sense of guilt and discomfort in a very young girl who never abandoned her.
Thus his second artistic phase, after investigative photography, was represented by the world of portraiture. Letizia Battaglia has photographed many little girls. Little girls with dark circles and sad eyes, little girls who lived in their world and who could not empathize with anyone around them and with the surrounding environment.
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Only years later, the photographer realized that that desire and need for photographic expression was nothing more than her personal and very intimate need to rediscover her childhood that she had lost too soon.
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The celebration of life and love
Letizia Battaglia is a true lover of life and love. She does not conceive the idea of old age. According to the photographer, in fact, it is only the body that ages inexorably, but nothing of what we possess and keep in our heads and hearts will ever do so if fed constantly and in the right way.
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Her idea of love is all-encompassing. It is an idea that goes beyond the age of the people involved, beyond their sexual identity and their belief in every sense. Love is life and Letizia Battaglia is someone who really loves life. Love is freedom and ... “freedom is being there”.
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