18 Dec The work of the great photographer of Palermo Letizia Battaglia arrives in Château de Tours, France.

The Exhibition.
From 5 December to 18 May 2025 Jeu de Paume pays homage to the Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia (1935-2022) – famous for her work on Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia that reigned in the Years of Lead – through a major retrospective presented at the Château de Tours, and entrusted the catalog to the publisher Dario Cimorelli. Tecnostampa, Loreto, is committed the printing the catalogue.
The exhibition is co-produced by Jeu de Paume, Paris and CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography, Turin; in collaboration with the Letizia Battaglia Archive, Palermo.
Curator: Walter Guadagnini, artistic director of CAMERA.
In collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris.

Letizia Battaglia. 
Apparently simple, her story began in 1969 by collaborating with the Palermo newspaper L’Ora, a legend of Italian publishing, which had among its signatures figures such as Mauro De Mauro, Giovanni Spampinato, Cosimo Cristina all killed by Cosa Nostra, but also Giovanni Verga and Salvatore Quasimodo. With the camera instead of the pen Letizia Battaglia told all the poetry and cruelty of her Sicily. Through her work we can learn about 50 years of Sicily’s history, from the condition of women, to the life of farmers, to the difficult neighborhoods of a forgotten island up to the bloody mafia massacres, to tell which Letizia Battaglia portrayed corpses in unnatural positions abandoned on the street like sacks of potatoes, the inconsolable and theatrical pain of relatives, the grimaces of bosses in handcuffs. He did it with a social purpose: to show the horror to shake souls and communicate to consciences the level of the massacre. By her is the most famous shot of the murder of Pier Santi Mattarella, at the time president of the Sicilian Region, which occurred in 1980 where Sergio, future President of the Republic, is seen helping his dying brother. He photographs them all, mafiosi, magistrates, agents and men of the state: from Boris Giuliano to Ninni Cassarà, up to Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone.

She will stop only later in 1992, after the murders of Falcone and Borsellino, when exhausted she dedicates herself to dissemination by testifying to her experience around the world, in schools and universities.
One of his most intense sentences is dedicated to his beloved city: “Palermo is a little magical, a little fallen, a little solemn. Palermo is life and death.” And light and mourning, the colors of her art, will forever be fixed in the memory of a great protagonist of our history.

Letizia Battaglia. The book.
The Volume highlights, through a selection of around 200 original and modern prints, from her beginnings in Milan until her death in 2022 in her hometown, Palermo, Letizia Battaglia’s extraordinary ability to show the world with ardent passion, in a direct, without hiding any aspect, from the most frightening to the most poetic.
The black and white of Battaglia’s photography emerges and is translated page after page with the lashing pain of the truth it represents. 
Printed in two-tone on two types of paper, the catalog that accompanies the exhibition is a work of art that contains the historical and artistic testimonies of a great protagonist of the culture of our time, with the technical support, participation and professionalism of the technical staff of Tecnostampa.

Letizia Battaglia
Edited by: Walter Guadagnini

Publisher:
Dario Cimorelli Editore
Jeu De Paume
Press:
Tecnostampa
Loreto (AN) Trevi (PG) Italy

for learn more
Letizia Battaglia