Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily is the first major exhibition in the UK following her death in 2022. Join this tour in British Sign Language with historian John Wilson.

Polite request: Please do not block book for this tour. Any individuals who are part of a group should book individually.

Born in Palermo, Sicily in 1935, Battaglia began her photographic career in the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-forties. She documented everyday life, alongside the brutal reality of the Mafia and their victims in Sicily during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Her images are some of the best-known records of life in the shadow of the Mafia. In her relentless pursuit against organised crime, she used her camera to document the daily terror, putting it on the front page. Reporting for the daily newspaper L’Ora, she or one of her colleagues, was present at every major crime scene in the city over two decades.  

Battaglia mainly photographed in black and white. She also captured daily life: women and children in their neighbourhoods and streets, showing the wealth of the area and at the same time the misery of a city almost abandoned to its fate. Her pictures capture the poverty on the streets as well as the life of the upper classes, religious processions, festivals, funerals and much more.

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John Wilson is a freelance historian. He currently works as a BSL lecturer and guide for a number of high profile institutions including the National Gallery, Historic Royal Palaces, Royal Academy and Science Museum, London.

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