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Letizia Battalgia''s new book shows brutal murders as well as the beauty of her native Sicily
The Godfather and The Sopranos may have romanticized the mob and created a whole genre of gangster movies, but Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia doesn''t find the topic all that entertaining. Americans love ''The Sopranos.'' They don''t believe the Mafia is like (they see on TV), but the Mafia is dangerous like ISIS, she said. When I see ISIS soldiers, I feel like they are a little bit like Mafiosi. They don''t give a damn about life. The Mafia doesn''t give a damn about anything but their interests and money and don''t care who they hurt along the way. Battaglia has seen the devastating effects of organized crime and corruption firsthand. Photographer Letizia Battaglia The 81-year-old Sicilian has spent her career photographing the innocent -- and not-so-innocent -- victims of Mafia murders. My archives are full of blood, she said. But I have also seen such immense beauty in the regular, complicated daily life in Sicily. She has culled the best of her 600,000-strong archive for her book Anthology, which will be released in Europe this month and then in the United States in September. She hopes her book will shed light on the real Mafia, not the one seen in movies, she told CNN in an exclusive television interview. Brutality leavened by hope Battaglia''s photos of brutal murder scenes are interspersed with photos of young girls and Sicilian women who give her hope. The book closes with a photo of her daughter in the throes of labor. She took the picture the day after she photographed a heinous and bloody Mafia murder scene in 1995. There were not a lot of sweet moments in my life during those years, she said. When my granddaughter was born, it gave me hope. Next year, she will open an exhibit to showcase what she refers to as the immense talent of photography, art, poetry and sculpture in Sicily. This has always been my dream, to open such a center in the place where I have seen such ugliness and such beauty, and to defy the ''ugly wealth'' that comes with the price of extreme poverty, she said, referring to the sacrifices regular Sicilians have had to make because of the Mafia. Accidental photographer A man covers himself with a cloak in the streets of Sicily in 1989. Battaglia should know about sacrifices. She came of age in Palermo during the bloodiest period of Italy''s battle with the Mafia, at the time when the syndicate was expanding its illicit trades in drugs and weapons. She married a wealthy older man at the age of 16, had three daughters, then left him and moved to Milan in 1971 when her children were grown. She got a job as a journalist, fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer. I proposed articles and they said, ''and the pictures?'' ... So I bought a camera, she said. She was never formally trained as a photographer, yet she has won dozens of international awards for her work. Social media Three years after she started taking pictures, an anti-Mafia, anti-Fascist newspaper offered her a job back in Palermo to shoot Mafia crimes. I was so happy to go back to my hometown of Palermo and be a photographer, she said. But I didn''t know the Mafia was so ferocious. It was terrible. I was there in Palermo, with my camera, and I forgot about being a writer. Battaglia spent the next four decades trying to find the balance between the bloody crimes and the beauty of Sicily. Her book seeks to bridge that gap with photos of young women and girls alongside photos of mostly dead men. My archive is full of dead people, she said, adding that even today when the phone rings, she assumes it means something terrible has happened. Now if I think about that
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