The extensive photographic ‘novella’ that Lisetta Carmi undertook within the transgender community of the historical city centre of Genoa began on New Year’s Eve 1965, when she was invited with her friend Mauro Gasperini to attend a party organised by members of said community. 

From that evening on, after taking her first few images, she shared many moments in the trans community’s daily lives – their ways of dressing and putting on make-up, of cooking up a meal, or of earning a living with sex work. Driven by an unerring belief in the right of every individual to define their own identity, she entered into the most hidden intimacies with respect, understanding and love, without voyeurism, and with the goal of lending dignity to every recorded moment.

Following several failed attempts to find a publisher, the photographic novella finally took concrete form, helped along in part by the scientific work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elvio Facchinelli, and, vitally, by the generous financial support of Sergio Donnabella: the famous book I Travestiti (Transvestites) was released by the publishing house Essedi in 1972.

In this complex project, Carmi turned the classic photographic gaze on contemporary life. She was ahead of her time, pioneering a clear, trenchant and glossy visual idiom that put the controversial issue of gender identity firmly in the public eye in an era when it was spoken of only in scientific studies and debates.

Lisetta’s gaze is unmistakable in these photographs: at first it appears objective, but in reality it challenges conventions and bourgeois norms. It is this gaze entirely free of moral judgement that allowed her to enter into her subjects’ cloistered, secret world; and thus during the long years of heartfelt friendship, she was able to record their painful private lives without a trace of cheap sensationalism.