Lisetta Carmi - I travestiti

1972, Italian, Lisetta Carmi,

Original title: "I travestiti" (The transvestites) by Lisetta Carmi, (Rome, Essedi, 1972).

This is a photographic book with about 150 black and white shots on a phenomenon that – at the beginning of the 70s – did not fail to cause a sensation, gender identity. The volume was originally equipped with a paper dust jacket (now very rare) to hide from view a cover that for the time was considered particularly scandalous.

The photos were shot in Genoa from 1965 to the early 1970s. It is an intimate and deeply sensitive meditation on sexual identity. Lisetta Carmi was the first professional artist to photograph the transgender community.

Sexual identity was a taboo for the society of the time, which in Italy was deeply Catholic and very conservative. Many booksellers refused to accept the book. Others hid it under the desk. Very few copies were sold. After a few years, discouraged, the publisher announced the pulping.

In order to save some books, the writer Barbara Alberti sent a truck to pick up the unsold, three thousand copies that she placed in her house and then used to give to the guests of her house. Today it sells very expensively on the market.

Available via cacciatoredilibri.com

and smargiassi-michele