Lisetta Carmi was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Genoa, Italy. Though she originally studied music, in 1960, Carmi gave up her career as a successful concert pianist in favor of photography. With the neo-fascist and reactionary uprisings of the 1960s, Carmi began participating in leftist protest movements. Inspired by this context, she used the camera as a tool for political activism to experience and share with those who aspire recognition in the common social space. Her most important photo series’ include L’Italsider (1962), which represents the interiors and exteriors of steel mills; Genova, il porto (1964), which articulates a post-war testimony of labor; and Erotismo e autoritarismo a Staglieno (1966), which documents a historic cemetery in the Staglieno district of Genoa. One of her most significant projects, I Travestiti, depicts a group of trans people living and working on the Via del Campo in Genoa.