Italian photographer born in Teramo who rose to prominence in the 1960s after beginning her career documenting Romanesque churches in Abruzzo.
Sebastiana Papa (1932-2002) was an Italian photographer born in Teramo. Starting with a Soviet-made Lubitel camera before switching to the Leica M3, she traveled extensively across the globe, capturing significant moments and subjects including Holocaust survivor Zivia Lubetkin Zuckerman in Poland, the funeral of Jan Palach in Prague, and cultural phenomena like tarantism in Puglia.
Throughout her career, Papa collaborated with major international newspapers and published twenty-six volumes with prestigious publishers. She had a particular focus on Israel, India, and female monasticism, making countless trips to these regions over the decades. Her final journeys were to two of her most beloved locations: Jerusalem in 2000 and Varanasi in 2001. After her death in Rome in 2002, her extensive archive of approximately 7,000 35mm negative films, contact sheets, and photographic prints was donated to the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation in Rome, while her library was given to the Centre for Peace and Interculture in Nonantola.
