Palazzo Ducale, residence of the Doge since 1339 and today an important centre of cultural production, is located in the heart of Genoa, the modern city that coincides with that of the ancient and powerful Maritime Republic. It’s here that the exhibition Extremely Close, Incredibly Far is being held, a tribute to the Genoese artist and photographer Lisetta Carmi on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her birth. A must-see exhibition because it is (simply) interesting, as interesting as the life and work of Lisetta Carmi, who was able to express her art and creativity by taking different paths, from music to photography. And because it is an opportunity to get to know the work of an artist who was a milestone in the history of photography.
Born in Genoa in 1924 and a graduate of the Milan Conservatory, she turned to photography in 1960 almost by chance: she interrupted her concert career to work as a stage photographer at the Teatro Stabile and to supply newspapers with pictures (after the shows, she would develop and print them to be published in the morning). In the 1960s she began a comprehensive survey of the port of Genoa and a reportage on Sardinia. From Genoa, she set out on her travels, in the two decades she devoted to the photographic practice, with reportages in Venezuela, India, Afghanistan, her lens as a tool for understanding the world and the human condition. She went on to produce a series of portraits of artists and cultural figures, from Joris Ivens to Charles Aznavour, from Luigi Nono to Jacques Lacan and Ezra Pound.
The exhibition, set up in the Sottoporticato in a manner reminiscent of contemporary art exhibitions, presents images from these works, as well as those from her research that took shape in the series I Travestiti of the 1960s, published in 1972, which caused a sensation and marked the photographic research of many international artists. Iconic images that the exhibition allows us to see alongside those in colour that were only rediscovered in 2017. Also unpublished is the colour version of Eroticism and Authoritarianism at Staglieno, in which the famous Genoese cemetery becomes, through her lens, a portrait of nineteenth-century bourgeois society, with all its contradictions, highlighting the “manner” of the characters portrayed in the funerary monuments, but above all the sensuality that pervades the depictions. Alongside the images documenting the world of work with Genoa – Port and the Italsider, images, the ones from the Anagrafe (Registry Office) series, some of which unpublished, are also on display.
According to the curator, Giovanni Battista Martini, the exhibition highlights Lisetta Carmi’s links with Genoa, the city where she worked as a photographer for some twenty years: “It was from here that she always set off on her travels around the world. Her photographs testify to her love and understanding of people and her desire, as a free human being, to understand reality without prejudice. In dialogue with the black and white photographs, the mostly unpublished colour images show a different approach to her photographic research. The attention to the physicality of the subjects extends to poetic reflections, without ever losing the political bearing and the power of the photographic medium to act on our conscience”. “It is not surprising that Lisetta Carmi is now at the centre of an unstoppable ‘rediscovery’ by the contemporary art world and is rightly considered one of the most important photographers of the late twentieth century,” adds Ilaria Bonacossa, curator of the exhibition and director of the Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura.
Lisetta Carmi, who always gave a voice to the less fortunate, was also able to tell of distant realities and changing worlds, using the power of colour as well as black and white to bring out the “truth” that was the red thread of her photographic work. As she used to say: “If they ask me ‘who taught you how to take photographs?’ I reply, “Life”.
Lisetta Carmi Molto vicino, incredibilmente lontano / Extremely close, incredibly far (Silvana Editoriale), is the title of the catalogue, that presents an overview of her work through almost 200 images, with essays by Ilaria Bonacossa, Dominic Eichler, Jennifer Evans and Giovanni Battista Martini.
Paola Sammartano
Lisetta Carmi. Molto vicino, incredibilmente lontano / Extremely close, Incredibly far
Until March 30, 2025
Palazzo Ducale – Sottoporticato
Piazza Matteotti, 9
16123 Genoa
Italy
