Letizia Battaglia (Palermo, 1935) took her first steps into the world of photography in Milan in 1971.
From 1974 to 1991, she directed the photography team of the Palermo daily newspaper L’ORA, leading a collective of photojournalists that included Franco Zecchin, Santi Caleca, Ernesto Battaglia, Shobha, Filippo La Mantia, and others. In 1978, she founded Il Laboratorio D’If in Palermo, the first photography gallery in southern Italy, which hosted exhibitions by some of the medium’s most important international practitioners.
Throughout her career, she combined photography with a profound commitment to environmental, cultural, and political causes. She worked as a theatre director and publisher (with Edizioni della Battaglia), served as a city councillor and as Councillor for the Greens under Leoluca Orlando’s administration during the years of the “Palermo Spring,” and later served as a member of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. A co-founder of the “Giuseppe Impastato” Documentation Centre, in 1991 she launched Mezzocielo, a bimonthly magazine dedicated to culture and politics and produced exclusively by women.
Her photographs have appeared in major international publications and have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries. Among her most significant retrospective exhibitions are Fotografia come scelta di vita (“Photography as a Choice of Life”) at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice, and Storie di strada (“Street Stories”) at Palazzo Reale in Milan and Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona. In 2017, she realized an important long-standing project by founding and directing the International Centre of Photography at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa in Palermo, an exhibition and educational space dedicated to historical and contemporary photography.
A pioneer of social documentary photography, she was the first European woman to receive the Eugene Smith Grant in New York in 1985. Among her numerous and prestigious international awards are the Mother Jones Achievement for Life Award (San Francisco, 1999), the Erich Salomon Prize (Germany, 2007), and the Cornell Capa Infinity Award (New York, 2009). Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the PeaceWomen Across the Globe initiative (1000 Women for the Nobel Prize), she was also named by The New York Times as one of the 11 most influential women of 2017, the only Italian woman on the list.
Her life and work have also inspired numerous essays and have been the subject of important cinematic and documentary works, including Battaglia (2004) by Daniela Zanzotto, Amore Amaro (2012) by Francesco Raganato for Sky Arte, La Mia Battaglia (2016) by Franco Maresco, Shooting the Mafia (2019) by Kim Longinotto, and La mafia non è più quella di una volta (2019) by Franco Maresco.
Her work with FPAC includes:
Per naso e per dono (with Stefania Galegati), 2026
Come casa (group exhibition), 2024
Minime d’amore, 2020