Letizia Battaglia - A Life in Pictures: A Punch and a Caress

It is titled Letizia Battaglia - A Life. Like a punch, like a caress and it is the first widespread exhibition dedicated to the photographer from Palermo. The exhibition, which will be held from March 9 to May 19 in Salerno, aims to engage in dialogue some of the historical-artistic sites of the ancient city with the photographic art of Letizia Battaglia. Thus, after the success of the latest exhibitions at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa and the Terme di Caracalla in Rome, Battaglia's photography returns to the South with an exhibition curated by Paolo Falcone and organized by the Modern Times association in collaboration with the Letizia Battaglia Archive and the Falcone Foundation for the Arts. The main body of the exhibition, which includes the display of over a hundred works, in addition to videos, documentaries, magazines, and books, will be set up in the halls of Palazzo Fruscione, a historic building from the 13th century, and in the Church of San Sebastiano del Monte dei Morti, thanks to the Municipality of Salerno. Added to these are the Court of Palazzo Pinto, thanks to the Province of Salerno; the Chapel of San Ludovico, thanks to the State Archive; the Chapel of Sant'Anna in San Pietro a Corte and the Hypogeum of San Pietro a Corte, thanks to the Superintendence of Fine Arts and Landscape of Salerno and Avellino. In an ideal circularity, a network of evocative places is built around the art of the photographer, editor, and activist from Palermo, creating a dynamic space for enjoyment that allows for a widespread visit in the ancient heart of the city of Salerno, in a constant dialogue between the art of the chosen places and the art of photography. "With this exhibition," explains curator Paolo Falcone, "the tradition of breaking the mold continues, of erasing themes, ignoring chronologies to build a unique and polyphonic work that, on this occasion, involves multiple places in the historic center of Salerno, where photography and everyday life merge into a single poetic, poignant, and dramatic journey that highlights the extraordinary visual sensitivity of the Palermo photographer". In Salerno, for the "first time", the classic suspensions of photographic works that have characterized the previous exhibitions curated for Battaglia are combined with the suspensions of works through crystal easels experimented and proposed at the Terme di Caracalla in Rome, easels that are a tribute to the great Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi.