When we look at pictures of conflict, violence and collective trauma we might expect to see only the horrors of maimed bodies and the crying souls of the victims. But in the photographs of one of Italy’s most cherished photographers, Letizia Battaglia, you do not see glamorised shots of the perpetrators because her images aren’t about them, they are about places and people.
The horror is there, but you also see flowers, a football, engaged crowds, and children in the street. Sure enough, some of these children hold guns because her pictures capture the normality that exists around the brutal violence in daily life.
Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1935 and was among the first women reporters in Italy. She died in 2022. She travelled the world with her pictures and won several awards for her photo-journalism.
