Lisetta Carmi

I Travestiti, Cristina

On New Year’s Eve in 1965, Lisette Carmi met and photographed a group of transgender people living and working on the Via del Campo in Genoa–the main street for prostitution in the city, located in the former Jewish ghetto. This encounter was the beginning of a seven year relationship with the group, and led to the publication of I Travestiti (1972), a controversial book that comprised all of the images Carmi took of the group between 1965-1971. Forming close friendships with the people she portrayed, the artist rented an attic near Via del Campo in Genoa to live with them, she captured the everyday lives of the group, depicting sex work from a new perspective. 

The series I Travestiti represents a deeply sensitive meditation on gender identity which documents the portraits, moments, and environments of the Genoese trans community. In this image, titled Cristina, the last survivor of the community photographed by Carmi poses casually inside the safe space of their apartment. They are in full make-up, sheathed in a crimson dressing gown, and surrounded by the quiet opulence of their bedroom. Carmi was the first artist to photograph the LGBTQ community in Italy. At the time, Italian society was deeply Catholic and highly conservative and gender identity was (and is still now) a taboo subject. Created with profound esteem, this series was also to some extent a mode of introspection and personal discovery for Carmi, linked to the experience of being a woman in a deeply misogynistic culture. Like her other photographic investigations, this series focuses on labor in marginalized communities. However, as this portrait of Cristina demonstrates, the work is more perceivably about friendship, rather than a photo-anthropological study.