In February of 1965 she portrayed the poet Ezra Pound in the village of Sant’Ambrogio perched above Rapallo. Their encounter unfolds on the threshold of his house and, as Carmi recalls: ‘…we arrived there unaware that he was alone in the house as well as ill. After we knocked, there was a long silence before he himself opened the door’. The encounter lasted precisely four minutes, during which the poet said not a single word.

The rapid sequence of twenty images the photographer shot while leaving the house depicts Pound’s slow movements in almost cinematic quality: how he remained on the threshold for a moment, then turned to go back inside before vanishing into the dark. 

Back in the darkroom, Carmi tells, ‘…everything I had ever seen in Pound was in those photographs. Of the twenty images, I selected the twelve that most convincingly conveyed the impression he left on me. (...) Loneliness, despair, aggression, and a gaze lost in infinity; everything that is hard to put into words, the dramatic grandeur of the poet.’

Broad circulation of this sequence and a huge press echo followed almost instantly: in 1966 Carmi received the prestigious Niepce Award . In February the following year the magazine Du used four of her photographs in an extensive feature on the poet.