wasn’t a real person [before I picked up the camera],” says Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia in the powerful new documentary,Shooting the Mafia.
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Battaglia took up photography at the age of 36, and eventually got a job working for L’Ora newspaper. Liberated from the constraints of patriarchy, which had stunted the full formation of her identity and agency until then, the position helped her come into her own.
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When Battalia was just 10 years old, a man masturbated in front of her on a Palermo street. In retaliation, her father locked her away inside the house, refusing to allow her on the balcony in case another man should see her. She was then sent to a Catholic school, which turned her into an atheist. In rebellion, at 16, Battalia married the first man who asked her and bore him three daughters.
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Her husband, like her father, denied Battaglia the freedom she craved and she eventually had to be hospitalised after having a mental breakdown. She spent two years in Switzerland recovering, returned to Sicily where she began to take lovers – one of whom was shot when her husband discovered them in bed together.
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