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SICILY

Italian anti-mafia photographer Letizia Battaglia dies aged 87

Legendary Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia, whose shots of bullet-riddled bodies captured the dark world of the Sicilian mafia, has died aged 87.

Published: 14 April 2022 11:10 CEST
Italian anti-mafia photographer Letizia Battaglia dies aged 87
Letizia Battaglia pictured at an exhibition of her work in Toulouse, southwest France, in 2016. Photo by ERIC CABANIS / AFP

Prize-winning Battaglia, who would speed to the scene of murders in the 1980s on her Vespa to bear witness to the violence, blew away the romanticised and sanitised image of the Cosa Nostra.

Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando said her death late Wednesday had deprived his city, the Sicilian capital, of “an extraordinary woman” who played “an emblematic part in the process of freeing Palermo from the mafia’s control”.

Battaglia, an anti-mafia campaigner who became a local politician in Palermo and then a regional Sicilian assembly member, started out in the photo department of a local daily newspaper.

“You could have five murders in the same day,” she said in 2006, when a collection of her photographs of organised crime slayings went on show in a Rome exhibition.

“The work was exhausting but you couldn’t stand by with your arms folded, with our little mafia on our little island.

“We had to bear witness to this violence and the world had to know.”

An exhibition of Letizia Battaglia’s work at Palazzo Fontana di Trevi in Rome, in 2006. Photo by GIULIO NAPOLITANO / AFP

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini mourned Thursday, “A great photographer, a great Italian woman who, with her art and her photographs, engaged in important struggles of denunciation and civil commitment.”

Battaglia’s pictures show a small street in Palermo, the interior of an apartment, the white wall of a pork butcher’s shop, a garage ramp, the back of a bus, a car seat.

They all have one thing in common: captured in black and white is a body lying on the ground near a pool of blood, or a face torn apart by a bullet.

Letizia Battaglia’s ‘Arrest of Mafia boss Leoluca Gagarella, Palermo, 1980″ on exhibition in Rome in 2006. Photo by GIULIO NAPOLITANO / AFP

It was the era when the Corleone clan fought their way to power, headed by boss Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano – who were finally caught last month after decades on the run.

From judges regarded as too interfering or local politicians to young drug dealers, the “Palermo war” left hundreds dead in the space of a few years, often gunned down in broad daylight and in public places.

Battaglia’s pictures are unsparing. Faces of the dead are shown with eyes wide open, surprised by death. Friends and relatives lament, while onlookers crowd round the scene with expressions of curiosity or resignation.

In 2006, she said those bloody times may be gone, but the mafia is not.

The Rome exhibition, she said, was “a cry for help, because the consequences for our island of the mafia are as unbearable as ever”.

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CULTURE

Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli dies at 83

Roberto Cavalli, whose penchant for python and flamboyant animal prints made him the darling of the international jet set for decades, died Friday at 83, the luxury company said.

Published: 13 April 2024 09:21 CEST
Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli dies at 83

“It is with deep regret and a great sadness the Roberto Cavalli Maison participates in the passing of its founder Roberto Cavalli,” wrote the company in a statement sent to AFP.

“From humble beginnings in Florence Mr. Cavalli succeeded in becoming a globally recognised name loved and respected by all,” said the company.

First seen in the 1970s on stars such as Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, Cavalli’s skin-baring, eye-popping styles were still favoured years on by later generations of celebrities, from Kim Kardashian to Jennifer Lopez.

With a taste for Ferraris, thoroughbred horses, fat cigars and tailored shirts unbuttoned to expose his tanned chest, the designer’s private life also appeared the stuff of fantasy.

He married a Miss Universe runner-up, owned a purple helicopter and a Tuscan vineyard, and was on a first-name basis with A-listers like Sharon Stone and Cindy Crawford.

But the designer also weathered challenges, including a dry spell in the 1980s when minimalism took hold on runways and his form-fitting, feathered creations looked out of step.

A years-long trial in Italy on tax evasion charges ultimately ended in Cavalli’s acquittal, but after his eponymous fashion house began posting losses, a majority stake was sold to private equity in 2015.

Best known for his use of printed leather and stretchy, sand-blasted jeans, Cavalli always embraced the wow factor in his designs, never encountering an animal print he did not like.

The designer was tapped in 2005 to update the Playboy Bunnies’ scanty uniform — true to form, he introduced one version in leopard print.

Party crasher

Born on November 15, 1940 in Florence, Italy’s premier leatherworking centre, Cavalli began painting on T-shirts to earn money while at art school.

He recalled in his blog in 2012 how he gate-crashed a party in 1970, and, seeking to save face when he met the host, who was a designer, told him that he printed on leather.

When the designer asked to see some of his work the next day, Cavalli hurried to find samples of thin, supple leather onto which he printed a flower design.

The designer was impressed, and Cavalli was hooked.

Taking his inspiration from glove design, Cavalli began working with calfskin, patenting a new way to print leather with patterns that soon caught the eye of French luxury goods maker Hermes and the late designer Pierre Cardin.

In the 1970s, he opened a shop in Saint Tropez, playground of the world’s glitterati, and debuted his collection in Paris.

He went on to present for the first time in Italy at Florence’s opulent Palazzo Pitti, grabbing attention with his boho-chic patchwork designs on denim that married the unpretentious fabric with expert tailoring.

‘I’m copying God’

Of his ubiquitous use of prints, the animal lover — whose menagerie once included a monkey — told Vogue in 2011: “I like everything that is of nature.”

“I started to appreciate that even fish have a fantastic coloured ‘dress’, so does the snake, and the tiger. I start(ed) to understand that God is really the best designer, so I started to copy God,” he told the magazine.

In the 1980s Cavalli’s instantly recognisable, exotic designs were out of sync with the minimalist look that was all the rage, but the designer came back with a bang a decade later with distressed-looking jeans that proved a hit.

His fashion empire expanded to home furnishings, wine, shoes, jewellery and even a line of vodka, its bottle sheathed in snakeskin.

Taking his style to the high street, he designed a fast-fashion line for Swedish retail giant H&M and tour outfits for Beyonce, among others.

But the label began to suffer financial difficulties amid increased competition from well-funded brands owned by fashion conglomerates LVMH and Kering, and Cavalli stepped down as creative director in 2013.

Two years later, Milan-based private equity group Clessidra bought a 90-percent stake in the company, but a restructuring failed to reverse losses.

After filing for administration and closing its US stores, the fashion group was bought in November 2019 by Vision Investments, the private investment company of Dubai real-estate billionaire Hussain Sajwani.

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