Lisetta Carmi’s Dignified Portraits of Italy’s Trans Community in the 1960s

Lydia Figes, AnOther Magazine, September 20, 2023
A new exhibition in London showcases the photographer’s disarmingly intimate portraits that served to counter the LGBTQ+ community’s demonisation in society.
In 1965, Lisetta Carmi was invited to a New Year’s Eve party in her native city Genoa, where she was born in 1924 to a Jewish family. By then in her early 40s, and already an accomplished pianist and experienced political activist, Carmi had recently turned her attention towards photography, focusing initially on the harsh labour conditions of the city’s dockworkers. But at the party, she found a subject matter that would trump her interest: Genoa’s trans community.
 
Over the next few years, Carmi immersed herself in the clandestine world of the city’s trans community, a project which in recent years has sparked renewed (yet belated) interest in her work. Lisetta Carmi: Identities, the first UK exhibition dedicated to her humanistic lens and unconventional start as a photographer will open at London’s Estorick Collection this month. A year since her death, the show situates her importance in the history of Italian photography.
 
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