Lisetta Carmi

Lisetta Carmi was a photographer and photojournalist who created deeply insightful portraits of marginalised communities and crafted surrealist tableaux of cityscapes. Born in 1924 into a Jewish family in Genoa, Carmi experienced extreme prejudice as a child, being forced to leave school at the age of 14 due to the introduction of racial laws brought about by the Italian Fascist regime. In the early 1960s, by chance Carmi was leant a camera by a friend and immediately fell in love with photography. Peers commended her innate talent for capturing light and extracting the theatrical elements of everyday environments. Early studies of the streets of Genoa echoed the playful, inquisitive eye of photographers such as Dora Maar, Eugène Atget or Cartier-Bresson. Carmi is best known for her photobook, I Travestiti (Transvestives), which documents the interior and exterior lives of transgender women in Genoa who Carmi photographed between 1965-1970. Through embedding herself within this community, the series captures intimate portraits and free flowing, dynamic scenes of these women laughing, dancing, or posing together. Through images that appreciate the women in the same way we would classical figures in Rococo or Renaissance paintings, an immense respect is given to her subjects. Contemporary parallels of Carmi’s would be photographers such as Letizia Battaglia, Nan Goldin, or Diane Arbus. ...

Dvir Gallery was founded in 1982 by Dvir Intrator to introduce cutting-edge contemporary Israeli artists. In 1994 the gallery broadened its’ representation to include international artists such as Miroslaw Balka, Marianne Berenhaut, Douglas Gordon, Latifa Echakhch, and Lawrence Weiner in its’ program. In 2013, Dvir Gallery combined its’ 3 separate spaces into a 5-story building, the first of its’ kind in Tel Aviv. In 2016, the gallery opened its first gateway to Europe with a branch in Brussels, which strengthen and developed the existing relationship with the international artistic community. Earlier this year, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the gallery opened a space in Paris, in the heart of the historical Marais District, emphasizing the special ties and connection the gallery has had, since its beginnings, with the French cultural milieu, collaborating with artists, institutions and private collections. ...