The largest and most populous region of Italy, Sicily is also the largest of the islands in the Mediterranean, defined by Fernand Braudel as “miniature continents”.
From 1974 to 1994, Franco Zecchin photographed Sicily, in the years of mafia war, but also of civil commitment and protests. Far from proposing a vision of the island as a marginal insularity, resigned to suffering the oppression of the mafia power and unable to react, this volume suggests that Sicily is a place of origin of the mafia but also of the antimafia, a space of political and social experimentation, open to the rest of the world.
Franco Zecchin
(Milan, 1953) He moved to Palermo in 1975, where he became a professional photographer, working on the Mafia, political corruption and social conditions in Sicily. In 1977, with Letizia Battaglia, he created a Cultural Centre for Photography and, in 1980, he was among the founders of the Documentation Center against the Mafia G. Impastato. He has make theater and films in the psychiatric hospital in Palermo. In 1988 he became a nominee member of Magnum agency. The engaged work made in Sicily between 1975 and 1993 is recognized internationally. Between 1990 and 1995 he lead a photographic research on nomadism and the use of environmental resources working on dozen societies in different parts of the world. Today he lives and works in Marseille, where he continues to explore, through photography, the relationship between appropriation of land and social practices. Awarded by the International Award of Journalism (1988, Trento, Italy) and by the Humanity photo Award (2000, Beijing, China), he has published several books. Among others, Continente Sicilia (Postcart, 2019 and Contrejour, 2019), Chroniques Siciliennes, (with L. Battaglia, CNP 1989, Actes Sud, 2000), Nomades (Editions de la Martiniére, 1998), Dovere di Cronaca - The duty to report (with L. Battaglia, Peliti Associati, 2006).
His pictures are in the collection of The Rochester International Museum of Photography, in the MOMA of New York, USA, and in the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, France.
Silvia Mazzucchelli, Doppiozero, 05/10/2022
Il Continente Sicilia: conversazione con Franco Zecchin
Marco Rigamonti
Andrea Attardi
Francesco Francaviglia
Roberto Strano
Lia Pasqualino
Giuseppe Leone
Francesco Zizola
Emiliano Mancuso
Francesca Leonardi
Dario Coletti
Frank Cancian
Franco Zecchin
