Yesterday I finally got to see this! I’d seen the exhibition in Venice at Casa Tre Oci earlier this year, but I’m so glad I saw it again. Letizia Battaglia took up photography when she was in her late thirties. She left an oppressive marriage (she’d got married at 16, left a father for a husband), went to Milan, started working as a photo reporter and then went back to Palermo where she started as photographer at the Communist afternoon paper, L’Ora. She photographed everything from football matches to mafia killings for which her photographs became an important social document. She’s often photographed women and children, and particularly young girls, and it’s this that continues to fascinate me. She re-found herself in them - one of her most famous photos is the girl with the ball or la bambina col pallone. And there’s this, Donna che fuma, Catania, 1984, woman smoking in Catania, of one woman and possibly every woman.
