Battaglia took up photojournalism after her divorce in 1971, while raising three daughters. She picked up a camera when she found that she could better sell her articles if they were accompanied by photographs and slowly discovered a passion for photography. In 1974, after a period in
Milan during which she met her long-time partner Franco Zecchin, she returned to Sicily to work for the left-wing ''
L'Ora'' newspaper in Palermo until it was forced to close in 1992. Battaglia took some 600,000 images as she covered the territory for the paper. She documented the ferocious internal war of the Mafia and its assault on civil society. She sometimes found herself at the scene of four or five different murders in a single day. Battaglia and Zecchin produced many of the iconic images that have come to represent Sicily and the Mafia beyond Italy. She wanted to expose and condemn the Mafia through her photography. She took her photographs of the dead in black and white as she believed it was more respectful, and offered its own silence. As a result of her photographs, Battaglia spent many years fearing assassination from the Mafia. Even so, she chose not to have bodyguards. In 2017 she told
The Guardian that "You no longer knew who your friends or enemies were. In the morning you came out of the house and did not know if you'd come back in the evening". Battaglia also became involved in women's and environmental issues. For several years she stopped taking pictures and officially entered the world of politics. From 1985 to 1991 she held a seat on the Palermo city council for the
Green Party, and from 1991 to 1996 she was a Deputy at the
Sicilian Regional Assembly for
The Network. She was instrumental in saving and reviving the historic centre of Palermo. For a time she ran a publishing house,
Edizioni della Battaglia, and co-founded a monthly journal for women,
Mezzocielo. She was involved in working for the rights of women and, most recently, prisoners. In 1993, when prosecutors in Palermo indicted
Giulio Andreotti, who had been
Prime Minister of Italy seven times, the police searched Battaglia's archives and found two 1979 photographs of Andreotti with an important Mafioso,
Nino Salvo, whom he had denied knowing. Aside from the accounts of turncoats, these pictures were the only physical evidence of this powerful politician's connections to the
Sicilian Mafia. Battaglia herself had forgotten having taken the photograph. Its potential significance was apparent only 15 years after it was taken. Outside of photography, her other ventures included a women's magazine, a publishing house and a photography school. ==Death==