Getty Museum

Luzzara, Italy / [Farmer's Daughter, Luzzara, Italy] / [Portrait of Angela Secchi]

Date

1953

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

In 1953, still searching for his ideal village, Paul Strand ventured to Italy, where he finally decided on the community of Luzzara after the Italian filmmaker Cesare Zavattini (1902-1989) introduced him to the place. The two men had met earlier, in 1949, at the International Film Conference held in Perugia, Italy. Strand wanted to continue with the now-successful combination of images and words and asked Zavattini to assist him with this particular project. Strand spent over a month in Luzzara and its environs in 1953 at a time when the townspeople were still healing from the pain and sorrow of the conflict of having lived through World War II. After a month of photographing the people, the village, and its environs, he presented the images to Zavattini, who, in turn, went to Luzzara and interviewed the inhabitants. Even though Zavattini had been born there, he too enlisted the help of Valentino Lusetti, a resident of Luzzara, to guide and introduce him to the local residents. Their stories, which are told in the first-person voice, accompany the photographs and offer insight into the subjects' lives and history in the 1955 publication _Un paese: Portrait of an Italian Village_. See also ([84.XM.894.2](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1049SX), [86.XM.683.30](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106NRV), [86.XM.683.77](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106NSY), [86.XM.685.1](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104E77)) Adapted from _Paul Strand_, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Anne M. Lyden (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 78, 80, and 82. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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