The Sicilian Mafia
Letizia Battaglia
“The war began in 1975, one against another, in a ‘civilized’ society. War had broken out against the men and women of the institutions, war against the honest judges, politicians, policemen, and journalists. The biggest civil war that could happen in a city began, because the mafia had gone too far and the bloodshed extended beyone their own family vendettas….
The camera offered me the possibility of fighting. I took pictures of everything. Suddenly I had an archive of blood. An archive of pain, of desperation, of terror, of young people on drugs, of young widows, of trials and arrests. There in my house, Franco Zecchin and I were surrounded by the dead, the murdered. It was like being in the middle of a revolution. I was so afraid….
Preview
I felt it was my responsibility, as a part of the Sicilian people, to fight. It could not be possible for one evil part of the society to decide the future for all. And so, with my camera, it turned into a madness, a desperate life where in a single day I might see five men killed, men with families. And despite the horror of it all, I tried to maintain a minimum of poetry within me....I'm afraid that no matter what I say, I cannot communicate the difficulty of those years in the late seventies, which were just the beginning. Yet they were not futile. It is important that since then, some of us, myself, Mayor Leoluca Orlando, and others, have worked together, planned, struggled, even if we have not yet won....
When I stopped taking pictures and entered politics, first as municipal councilwoman, then as regional deputy, and lastly as municipal councilwoman again. I was afraid I had betrayed photography, and maybe even the struggle, since I had felt that taking pictures was my only weapon. But then I realized that the same motivation lies behind my photography and my politics, the same will to combat, to stay on the front line. Working in a different way, I could accomplish different things. So despite many difficult times, we continued into the eighties with our politics, photography, publishing, meetings, and anti-mafia demonstrations....
I think that my life truly began with my camera. I mean my freedom as a person, my voice.... Freedom is something priceless, extraordinary....I have always thought of myself as a free creature, as a girl, as a woman, I have always felt I had the right to my freedom. I have lived all the years of my life with this idea."
LETIZIA BATTAGLIA from "Battaglia in Black and White" by Melissa Harris, in: Letizia Battaglia: Passion, Justice, Freedom.Photographs of Sicily)
Exhibition produced by Aperture and shown in Perpignan with the support of the French Minister of Culture.
