A collection of 5 loose silver gelatin photographic prints, showing mob killings, funerals and families by Nicola Scafidi (1925-2004), Sicily's most important mafia photographer of his time. The Palermo photographer Scafidi spent much of his career making striking yet chilling pictures of mob killings, as almost half of the negatives in his archives were shots of the dark world of the Sicilian mafia.
On the back of four of the five photographs is a short caption, stating very briefly what we are seeing (and sometimes when it happened).
All photographs bear the stamp of Scafidi's photographic studio on the back. All but the photograph of Paolino Riccobono have the same address: "Via [Marino] Stabile no. 171". The address on the photograph of Paolino reads "Via M[arino] Stabile n. 166". Scafidi moved his studio to no. 166 in 1956, but since this photograph was made in 1961, the photograph must have been printed thereafter. We do not know when Scafidi moved to no. 171, but it was very likely also in the 1960s, as the latest dated photographs bears the date 1966 and another shows a 1960 killing. He moved to no. 163 in the same street in 1988, but the present photographs all seem to have been printed in the 1960s.
The present small collection of disturbingly gruesome photographs of mob killings in the 1960s by one of Sicily's greatest photo-journalists as printed from his studio, shows evidently how the Sicilian mafia was so thoroughly and chillingly intertwined in the Sicilian society, touching all levels of society.
In very good condition. Cf. Lee Hockstader, "Sicilian mafia licking its wounds", in: The Washington Post, 21 April 1998; Jane Schneider & Peter T. Schneider, Reversible destiny: mafia, antimafia and the struggle for Palermo (2003), pp. 103-104.