Meeting with Letizia Battaglia in Castelnuovo Magra

On September 21, 2019 at 5:30 p.m., a meeting with the public will be held in Castelnuovo Magra (SP) by one of the greatest international photographers, Letizia Battaglia. The initiative is part of the exhibition La strada, la lotta, l’amore (The Road, the Fight, the Love), curated by Archivi della Resistenza and visitable in the Tower of the Castello dei Vescovi di Luni until October 13. The exhibition brings together for the first time the photographs of three renowned Italian photographers, Letizia Battaglia, Tano D’Amico and Uliano Lucas. Letizia Battaglia will be interviewed by Elena Nieddu, journalist for Secolo XIX. For the occasion, the exhibition will be open continuously from 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and until Oct. 13 it will be possible to visit on weekends from 10:30 a.m. to 12-30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Letizia Battaglia (Palermo; 1935) is a photojournalist who enjoys numerous international awards: she was the first European woman to receive the Eugene Smith Prize. Her most famous photos are those taken for the Palermo newspaper L’Ora, through which she documented and denounced the Mafia wars of the 1970s and 1980s. However, her images cover a wider range of themes, inherent in Sicilian and Palermo life: traditions, daily life, festivals and mourning, the faces of power and the hopeful looks of children and women, in a city of a thousand contradictions. In recent years, Letizia Battaglia has been enjoying extraordinary success internationally, becoming a cult artist for many young and very young people as well. In recent weeks she has been in the spotlight for her participation in Franco Maresco’s latest film La Mafia non è più quello di una volta, which won the special jury prize at the 76th Venice Film Festival. This participation is also recognition of the courage of an anti-Mafia militancy he has always exhibited, even in very difficult times for his beloved Sicily.

Speaking of the photo of the little girl with the ball, Letizia Battaglia said, “The photograph is the story of an encounter, in the little girls I also see myself as a little girl.”

The following is a passage from the interview Io cerca la bambina che è in me published in the catalog Letizia Battaglia, Tano D’Amico, Uliano Lucas La strada, la lotta, l’amore.

"I was with two photographers, Franco Zecchin and Ernesto Bazan, we were sitting in a kind of tavern and I see from a distance three or four children and I don’t know why I get up in a hurry and I go towards them, six, seven shots, I photograph them. Then this little girl, everything happens in 30 seconds: I push her against the wall and she looks at me mesmerized, raises her arm and she had a thousand lira in her hand. I always try to see again the ones I photographed, but after thirty-eight years after I took the picture, I had not been able to find her. I had gone home, showed the picture, but no one seemed to remember her as a child, not even the old people remembered her.

One day, talking to Dacia Maraini, I told her that I was looking for her with great fear, because she was the photo that I had had by my side all these years, she had accompanied me in the denunciations, in the murdered dead; the little girl, with those grave eyes, was my hope. Dacia contacted a friend of hers who was working on the TV show “Chi l’ha visto?” They made this ad on TV, two women show up, but it’s not them. After that she finally shows up. I say to myself before I meet her, “Who’s showing up? A witch, a drug dealer?” Then she comes, a wonderful woman, tall, very elegant in her simplicity, beautiful, good when I hug her. I was happy because she had married a policeman, her son is a policeman and rapper who sings in Milan. So my little girl had not betrayed me, I don’t know maybe I’m talking nonsense, but I felt that everything had gone well. That little girl, who had been for me a bit of a reference of something I had inside, had become such a beautiful woman and such a good woman, here she had not betrayed me. Over time I met people who then became something else, however, this woman made me happy, because she is my most famous, most known and beautiful picture also. There are also the good things, absolutely I have gone through more good things than bad in my life, otherwise I would feel a little bit that I have failed. I have wonderful things to tell, but I won’t tell you!"

Meeting with Letizia Battaglia in Castelnuovo Magra

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