Letizia Battaglia stars in major exhibition in Ancona: Stories of the Street

The exhibition Letizia Battaglia. Stories of the Road has arrived in Ancona where it will remain there until January 15, 2021 in the spaces of the Mole Vanvitelliana. It is a major retrospective with more than 300 photographs, many of them unpublished, reconstructing by stages and themes the extraordinary professional life of Letizia Battaglia (Palermo, 1935). Promoted by the City of Ancona, Department of Culture, the exhibition has already successfully toured Milan.

The exhibition continues to complete an exhibition itinerary that the City of Ancona and Civita wanted to dedicate to the great masters of 20th-century and contemporary photography.

Storie di strada spans the entire professional life of the Sicilian photographer, and develops along a narrative path built on different chapters and themes. Portraits of women, of men or animals, or of children, are just some of the chapters that make up the exhibition; to these are added those on cities such as Palermo, and then on politics, life, death and love, and two films that delve into her human and artistic life. The exhibition focuses on the subjects that built the artist’s most characteristic expressive style, which led her to make a profound and continuous social critique, avoiding clichés and questioning the visual assumptions of contemporary culture. A poetic and political photographer, a woman who is interested in what surrounds her and what, far from her, intrigues her.

As Battaglia herself had occasion to recall, “Photography I lived it as a document, as an interpretation and as something else [...]. I experienced it as salvation and as truth.” “I am a person,” she further states, “I am not a photographer. I am a person who photographs.”

“What the exhibition project proposes to exhibit of Letizia Battaglia’s journey,” says Francesca Alfano Miglietti, curator of the exhibition, “are ’forms of attention’: something that comes even before her photographs, because Letizia Battaglia questioned everything that fell under her gaze, whether it was a murder or a child, a glimpse or a gathering, a person or a sky. Looking was her main activity, which ’materialized’ into extraordinary images.”

“Ancona is hosting at the Mole an exhibition that was on its way in early 2020,” explains Culture and Tourism Councillor Paolo Marasca. “The Administration has decided, with a great spirit of reaction and awareness, to schedule it anyway when the activities resume, because it is an exhibition about life, challenges, relationships, tenacity and a complex and difficult country. But also because resuming from a great exhibition, from a great event of national scope and very high social value, is a signal for the whole territory. There could not have been a more suitable artist, because Letizia Battaglia speaks to the feelings and the heart, and she does it with critical sense and great passion. I must personally thank all the staff of the City and the Mole who contributed to such an important event, in such a short time, and with the difficulties of these months. Truly passionate and wonderful people.”

A Marsilio Editore catalog accompanies the exhibition, with texts by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Leoluca Orlando, Maria Chiara Di Trapani, Filippo La Mantia, and Paolo Ventura.

For all information you can send an email to mostraletiziabattaglia@gmail.com.

Pictured: Letizia Battaglia, Woman smoking (Catania, 1984).

Letizia Battaglia stars in major exhibition in Ancona: Stories of the Street

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.