The J. Paul Getty Museum

Object Description

In the early 1950s Paul Strand spent six weeks in the rural northern Italian town of Luzzara, located on the Po River. He traveled the countryside with local townsman Valentino Lusetti, whose family Strand photographed arranged across the front of their family home. This group portrait includes Valentino's widowed mother Anna, standing with a solemn expression in the darkened doorway, and four of his brothers: Bruno, Guerrino, Afro, and Nino, none of whom look directly at the camera.

The circle and spokes of the bicycle wheel are repeated in the semi-circular paned window above the door and in the half-circle shape seen through the door above Anna's left shoulder, serving as a unifying element of the composition. In 1955 Strand published a book of photographs he made in Luzzara, Un paese(A Village).