When Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia passed away on April 13, 2022, the biggest shock among those of us who have written about her was that she didn’t die at the hands of the Mafia.
For nearly five decades she fearlessly fought the criminal enterprise. Armed with her 35mm camera, she publicized the Sicilian Mafia’s reign of terror with her photographs of the bullet-riddled bodies of public servants, innocent bystanders and mafiosi. She later worked as a politician and local activist to wrest Palermo’s streets and piazzas from the Mafia’s grip.
