After the great success of critics and public on March 20, 2019 at the foundation Tre Oci in Venice, the photographic exhibition by Letizia Battaglia “Storie di strada” curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti inaugurated in the halls of Palazzo Reale in Milan last December 4th.A heartfelt story and strongly sought by the curator also known under the pseudonym FAM, a friend and passionate an admirer of the great Palermo photographer, in a vast archive of extraordinary images, hidden and guarded like a secret treasure.

Marineo, 1980. La bambina e il buio

A return to the beloved Milan that in 1971 gave her the opportunity to start her career, when Battaglia thought of as a journalist for the Corriere della Sera and instead clearly showed herself as a careful photographer, a witness of her time. A first look at the Palazzina Liberty and a very young Franca Rame among so many children.As well as the extraordinary portraits of Pier Paolo Pasolini so close we could touch him, hear and listen. Begins with these images the show of Battaglia, which develops in the five rooms of Palazzo Reale with the poignant beauty of street people, amid simple joys and crimes of the mafia, where hope accompanies pain, as in the artworks of Caravaggio or in the Renaissance portraits, chiaroscuro of common existences where the word humility finds its own precise meaning.Smiles, kisses and caresses as well as the tears of women for their children and comrades killed by the barbarous mafia. Blood, earth, family reunions, dances and games, everything that is part of our lives, in an ordered phantasmagoria of a personal and moving story. “I was tired of being told that I was a Mafia photographer, so I approached the groin of a woman in search of a different perspective of beauty and pain“, says Battaglia in the video that closes and completes the show with just the words of the author.

Alessandro Turci speaking