Gallerie d'Italia Torino Hosts Major Lisetta Carmi Retrospective

A major retrospective of photographer Lisetta Carmi (Genoa, 1924 – Cisternino, 2022) has opened at Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, curated by Giovanni Battista Martini with a short film by Alice Rohrwacher. The exhibition spans eight sections, beginning with portraits of women from Israel, Europe, India, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Morocco, and Mexico, followed by images of Genoa's Monumental Cemetery offering a socio-anthropological reading of the late 19th-century Genoese bourgeoisie. A notable sequence captures Ezra Pound in a brief meeting that earned Carmi the Niépce Prize for Italy. The work section documents harsh labor conditions of 'camalli' dock workers unloading phosphates and interiors of the Italsider steel plant in Bagnoli. Carmi herself describes some works through short videos. The exhibition also features her 1965 reportage on the Paris Métro, which won second prize at Fermo, and a six-year photographic study of transvestites in Genoa's historic center, begun on New Year's Eve 1965. A section titled 'Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera' allows visitors to hear Luigi Dallapiccola's compositions while viewing Carmi's photograms inspired by his music. This show launches 'La grande fotografia italiana' project entrusted to Roberto Koch and inaugurates the Manica Lunga spaces of Intesa Sanpaolo's Gallerie in Turin.