Letizia Battaglia “Minime d’amore”

During an interview shortly after the publication of Frammenti di un discorso amoroso (1977), in reply to the question of whether love was out of fashion Roland Barthes said, “Yes, it is, without any doubt.”
Discussing his idea further he asserted that love was absolutely out of fashion and unpopular especially in intellectual circles, but that on the other a popular emotion that considers the theme, whilst still absorbing its madness, existed.

“Minime d’amore” by Letizia Battaglia is about love in an absolute sense because the emotion of love has so many different tones and motives. It isn’t just the complex relationship between two individuals – be it man and woman, man and man, woman and woman – but considers a much greater collection of relationships, intensity and awareness.

Besides her most famous and iconic images – those incredible works of a photo reporter that everyone knows and that a generation of women (and men) look at as an example of courage and freedom – the archive of Letizia Battaglia offers an unexpected quantity of intimate and poetic works, traces of an incredible humanity. Lives of people now far away in time and lost in space, lives that certainly loved.