Lisetta Carmi: The Many Lives of an Italian Photographer Remembered

Angela Madesani recalls meeting Lisetta Carmi (Genoa, 1924 – Cisternino, 2022) at the former studio of Gabriele Basilico, with his wife Giovanna Calvenzi. Carmi, then in her nineties, was lively and sharp despite being hard of hearing. Born Jewish, she was expelled from Italian schools in 1938 and initially devoted herself to piano. In 1960, after her teacher forbade her from participating in protests against the MSI congress in Genoa for fear of hand injuries, she quit the instrument, declaring that if her hands were more important than humanity, she would stop playing. She then turned to photography, sneaking into Genoa's port to photograph dock workers, briefly capturing Ezra Pound at his Rapallo home, and producing reportages on Sardinia and Sicily. Her most famous work, 'I travestiti' (1972), documented the lives of transgender women in Genoa's alleyways; it was boycotted for years and nearly pulped, saved only when Barbara Alberti bought all copies to give to friends. In 1976, Carmi met the master Babaji in India and founded the Bhole Baba ashram in Cisternino, where she spent her final years. Madesani eulogizes her as an intelligent woman who, through self-discovery, offered a broader, more open vision of the world.