Portsmouth, NH -
It’s not easy taking photographs of Mafioso. Remember the wedding scene in “The Godfather” (1972) when mob kingpin Barzini (Richard Conte) ripped the film from the camera of a photographer who dared take his photo? And recall that it was hot-headed Sonny (James Caan) in the same sequence who destroyed a paparazzi’s camera.
These retributions might have been familiar to the Sicilian photographer Letitia Battaglia. She excelled in many genres, but her work shooting Mafia and their lurid savagery was her calling card. Come to think of it, she photographed far more dead than living Mafioso, but doing so as a single mom raising three daughters and under constant threat of assassination.
In Weegee-like fashion, she would routinely find herself at multiple murder scenes in one day. She told The New York Times in 2001 that she “had an archive of blood.” In the process, however, she was playing a heroic role in calling Mafia to account and building public sentiment against them. She once told Vice that her mission was “to document everything that acted as testimony against the Mafia.” And she did.
She shot primarily in black & white, adding stark realism to her images. More interesting than her crime-scene photos, however, were her shots of ordinary people living their lives in the shadow of fear.
Images courtesy of Letizia Battaglia.