Contrasto

Letizia Battaglia is the catalogue published on the occasion of the monographic exhibition open to the public from Oct. 8, 2024 to Feb. 23, 2025 at the Photographer's Gallery in London, curated by Paolo Falcone, in collaboration with the Letizia Battaglia Archive, Falcone Foundation for the Arts, and with the contribution of Candido Speroni and Carla Fendi Speroni Foundation and the Italian Cultural Institute of London. The exhibition, like the catalog, testifies to Italian life and society with photographs from the great photographer's historical archive. For nearly fifty years Letizia Battaglia has photographed, observed and lived intensely her time and especially her city, Palermo. Letizia Battaglia is a tribute to her work, her intense and new gaze, her yearning for freedom and her always being a woman against the tide. It is an uninterrupted album that goes from Milan to the face of Pier Paolo Pasolini, from the many mafia deaths to the unconscious elegance of the little girls of the Cala district in Palermo; and then the religious processions, the faces of Piersanti Mattarella, Giovanni Falcone up to the ferocious boss Leoluca Bagarella. For almost fifty years, Letizia Battaglia has photographed, observed and experienced her time and above all her city, Palermo. As Shoair Mavlian, director of the Photographers' Gallery in London, writes, Letizia Battaglia's images could be seen “through the lens of life; something chaotic, random, unpredictable, cruel and dangerous, but also full of love and empathy”. With a text by Paolo Falcone, the volume's editor, the photographs now chase each other in a unique and formidable sequence where ‘photography and everyday life converge in a single path that highlights the extraordinary visual sensitivity, the courage to be at the distance of a punch or a caress to conquer the image, often obtained in extreme contexts but always full of dignity’.

Sebastio Salgado’s photographs have been shown around the world. In From my land to the Planet the photographer tells us the story of his most famous reportages: from the black and white portraits of unknown men and women, workers or refugees, to the more recent Genesis project, a portrait of the most incontaminated places of our planet. With a kindness and a disarming simplicity, Salgado rebuilds his path, exposes his beliefs, makes us witnesses of his emotions. In this volume his talent as a storyteller and the authenticity of a man who knows how to combine activism and professionalism, talent and generosity, clearly emerge. The reader will discover fascinating stories of every corner of the world, both near and remote, from Africa to the Americas, and then again the birth of the Instituto Terra, of the Genesis project, of Magnum Photos and Amazonas Images.