Lisetta Carmi. Five Paths

Curated by Alessandra Mauro

29 April – 27 September 2026

The CAMERA OSCURA project pays tribute to the photographer Lisetta Carmi, tracing the eighteen intense years she devoted to photography with an innovative gaze and groundbreaking originality  

From 29 April to 27 September 2026, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia pays tribute to Lisetta Carmi with the exhibition Cinque strade (Five Paths) curated by Alessandra Mauro in CAMERA OSCURA, the area devoted to photography within the museum.

The title of the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue alludes to the five careers pursued by the artist but the exhibition focuses specifically on 23 works made during a period when Lisetta Carmi, after suddenly abandoning her musical career, chose photography as her expressive medium. These eighteen intense years of work, during which Carmi managed to address burning issues with an innovative gaze and opened up new paths of understanding with a strikingly original, passionate approach.

Lisetta Carmi was a unique figure within the Italian art scene, a talented pianist, an innovative and participatory photographer, a woman endowed with spirituality and always ready to look at contemporary issues in a profound way. Her courage led her to make radical choices in just a few hours and without any apparent regret.

Lisetta Carmi (1924–2022)

Born in Genoa in 1924, Lisetta Carmi began her career as a concert pianist at an early age but gave it up in 1960, opting instead for involvement in social activism. In search of a new occupation, she chose photography as the main activity of her life: her reportage demonstrates the constant attention she displayed to her surrounding environment in all its manifold forms.

While one of her first photographic projects was devoted to music – the Quaderno musicale di Annalibera by Luigi Dallapiccola – she subsequently began to document the workplace and, in particular, the port of Genoa, as well as the statues of the monumental cemetery of Staglieno, a site that bears witness to the city’s past.

The close attention she paid to others led Lisetta Carmi to take numerous portraits of intellectuals, friends and musicians. An outstanding example, in terms of their power and depth, is the extraordinary series of twelve photographs devoted to Ezra Pound, the great American poet captured on the threshold of his house at Sant’Ambrogio di Zoagli in February 1966. It was a sudden, rapid encounter that took place in just four minutes without a word being uttered, a work that earned her the prestigious Nicéphore Niépce Prize. In the mid-1960s, Carmi came into contact with the transgender community of Genoa and took extraordinary photographs with a mixture of discretion and understanding that would be published in the volume I Travestiti (1972). “The photographs provide a sympathetic account of a world that had hitherto remained hidden and taboo, but they also reveal the true close friendship that links photographers and their subjects without passing judgement” (A. Mauro). Carmi was also an indefatigable traveller and was curious about the world. On one of her journeys through India in 1976, she met Babaji Herakhan Baba who would become her spiritual teacher. A few years later, after giving up photography, Lisetta Carmi set up an ashram at Cisternino in Puglia where she lived until her death in 2022.

Public museums have paid tribute to her work, including the exhibitions held at the Maison de la Culture de Rennes (1991), Palazzo Ducale in Genoa (2016), Museo di Roma in Trastevere (2018), and Gallerie d’Italia in Turin (2023). She received many awards such as the Prix Niépce Italia for her reportage Ezra Pound (1966).

The exhibition has been organised with the support of L’orologio società cooperativa – Business Unit Cultura and the contribution of Connesi. We would like to express our gratitude to the Archivio Lisetta Carmi.

The catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, is edited by Alessandra Mauro with a critical text by Costantino D’Orazio.

CAMERA OSCURA

The project Camera Oscura.La Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria per la fotografia, curated by Marina Bon Valsassina and Costanza Neve, aims to explore the essence of the art of photography, a medium which, since its inception, has captured moments and told stories, becoming a source of evidence for everyday life and human emotions. The very concept of the ‘camera oscura’, which dates back to the invention of photography, represents the idea of a place where light enters through a minute hole, creating images projected onto a surface. This process of revelation lies at the heart of photography: a dialogue between light and shade that gives life to unique, personal visions.

The project offers a new way of interpreting reality, shedding light, even in darkness,  on the art of photography, both as a technique and form of artistic expression, in order to show, through photographs, the thread that links the art of the past to that of the present. A neon sign marks the entrance to this ‘secret’ space, enveloped in soft light and evocative shadow. Tempera, oil, paintbrushes or glues are not to be found here. Instead, it is a place to explore concepts of time, exposure, depth and focus.