Letizia Battaglia. Without End
Seventy images to retrace the extraordinary career of the great photographer Letizia Battaglia. Until October 26, the Palazzo di Città in Cagliari hosts 'Letizia Battaglia Without End' with iconic and lesser-known images.
The exhibition, curated by Palo Falcone and organized by Electa in collaboration with the Letizia Battaglia Archive and the Falcone Foundation for the Arts, is promoted by the Municipality of Cagliari in collaboration with the Fondazione di Sardegna.
Letizia Battaglia is recognized as one of the leading figures in international photography history. She is universally remembered for her courage, shown during her collaboration with the newspaper L'Ora di Palermo, for the images taken during the bloody mafia war of the 1970s and 1980s.
Photography for Letizia Battaglia is an important tool for her empowerment as a woman and a mother. Over time, she understands the social and denunciatory role it can play in society.
'Without End' is a tribute to Letizia Battaglia. The exhibition - while offering a unified view of a fifty-year career - follows her pattern of breaking boundaries with a unique project spread across multiple spaces, where a wide selection of photographs narrate in a timeless, non-chronological, and thematic way the multiple aspects of her photography.
'Without End' is a collection of works by Letizia Battaglia that revisit the main themes of her career. With this exhibition in Cagliari, the tradition of breaking boundaries, disregarding themes, ignoring chronologies, and constructing a comprehensive work that lasts for almost five decades is maintained.
'Without End' is also a tribute to architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and the installation created in 1968 for the art collection of MASP-Museu de arte de São Paulo in Brazil, where works were suspended with glass trestles. For the Palazzo di Città, the crystals become a suspended forest with large-format double-sided photographs, creating an open, non-vertical, non-hierarchical installation of photographic works.
Letizia Battaglia's most famous images document one of the most bloody, poetic, poignant, and dramatic pages of Sicilian history. But this exhibition aims to open up to a universe of photographs taken outside her homeland, important stages of travel to understand her work and thoughts more deeply. Photography, journalism, and private life converge in a single path, highlighting the extraordinary sensitivity and humanity of the Palermo-born photographer. A selection of works created at the psychiatric hospital in her city is dedicated to her, where Battaglia involved and made patients the protagonists. An event that she revisited several times over the years. 'Graziella' from 1983 is one of these shots and opens the exhibition.
