Lisetta Carmi was born in Genoa on February 15, 1924, into a wealthy bourgeois family. Due to the racial laws, in 1938 she was forced to leave school and take refuge in Switzerland with her family. At the end of the war, in 1945, she returned to Italy and graduated from the Milan Conservatory. In the following years, she performed concerts in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Israel. In 1960, she ended her musical career and, almost by chance, approached photography, which she soon turned into a true profession. For three years, she worked as a photographer at the Teatro Duse in Genoa. She collaborated with the Municipality of Genoa, producing a series of photo reportages documenting various social realities and urban issues, including hospitals, the civil registry office, the historic center, and the city’s sewer system.
In 1964, she carried out an extensive photographic investigation of the port of Genoa, which led to a traveling exhibition. During the same period, she continued a reportage on Sardinia that had begun in 1962 and was completed in the 1970s. After a stay in Paris, she published the volume Métropolitain, an artist’s book containing a series of images taken in the Paris metro. In 1965, her most famous project took shape: a series on Genoa’s transvestite community, which would become a book in 1972. In 1969, she embarked on a three-month journey through Latin America, followed the next year by travels to Afghanistan and Nepal. In 1971, she purchased a trullo in Cisternino, Apulia. On March 12, 1976, in Jaipur, India, she met Babaji Herakhan Baba, Mahavatar of the Himalayas—an encounter that would profoundly transform her life.
Also in 1976, she traveled to Sicily on assignment for Dalmine, producing the book Acque di Sicilia, which featured images of the island’s landscapes and social conditions, accompanied by a text by Leonardo Sciascia. Over the years, she photographed many artists and cultural figures, including Judith Malina, Joris Ivens, Charles Aznavour, Edoardo Sanguineti, Leonardo Sciascia, Lucio Fontana, César, Carmelo Bene, Luigi Nono, Luigi Dallapiccola, Claudio Abbado, Jacques Lacan, and Ezra Pound—particularly memorable are the portraits taken in 1966 at Pound’s home in Zoagli, Liguria. In the following years, Lisetta Carmi devoted herself fully to the creation of the Bhole Baba ashram in Cisternino, dedicating her life to spreading the teachings of her spiritual master. In 1995, after thirty-five years, she reconnected with Paolo Ferrari, her former piano student, and began a collaboration with him centered on philosophical and musical study.
Lisetta Carmi currently lives in Cisternino.
