MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Life with Sicily’s Mafia
ANNA SERGI recommends the first UK exhibition of a remarkable female photographer who studied the impact of mafia violence on everyday life
(L - R) Cala neighbourhood, the little girl with the ball, Palermo, 1980; He was killed on his way to the garage to get his car, Palermo, 1976; Near the Church of Santa Chiara, the killer’s game, Palermo, 1982
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily
Photographers’ Gallery, London
WHEN we look at pictures of conflict, violence and collective trauma we might expect to see only the horrors of maimed bodies and the crying souls of the victims. But in the photographs of one of Italy’s most cherished photographers, Letizia Battaglia, you do not see glamorised shots of the perpetrators because her images aren’t about them. They are about places and people.
The horror is there, but you also see flowers, a football, engaged crowds, and children in the street. Sure enough, some of these children hold guns because her pictures capture the normality that exists around the brutal violence in daily life.
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