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Lot Essay
In 1951 Hazel and Paul Strand traveled to Italy with the screen writer, Cesare Zavattini to collaborate on a book project documenting Zavattini's home town of Luzzara. For several months in 1952 and 1953, Strand created the images for Un Paese, with text by Zavattini, published in 1955. The sequence of images of Luzzara and its inhabitants is dominated by the portrait of the Lusetti Family - tenant farmers posed against the backdrop of their modest home.
The Family, Luzzara is considered Strand's most important post-war work and continues earlier themes of photographing people in their natural habitat. As he later recalled: 'I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces, whatever life has done to them, it hasn't destroyed them. I gravitate toward people like that.' (Paul Strand, Sixty Years of Photographs, Aperture, pp. 30-32, 166-167)
Approximately fifteen prints of this image are known to exist, including, according to the Strand Archive, 5 x 6in. contact prints in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Hallmark Collection; The Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. At least two of these prints are variant images without the man in the doorway.
In 1953 - the same year as this image - Strand purchased his first enlarger and began making 8 x 10in. prints. Enlargements of this image would have been made later in the 1950s and examples can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are approximately five other known prints in private collections.
In addition to the print offered here, there is one other known work, printed in the 1960s, in the Paul Strand Archive. Slightly larger than the 1950s prints, prints made in the 1960s have a greater richness and clarity achieved by his preference for heightened contrast and toning.
The Family, Luzzara is considered Strand's most important post-war work and continues earlier themes of photographing people in their natural habitat. As he later recalled: 'I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces, whatever life has done to them, it hasn't destroyed them. I gravitate toward people like that.' (Paul Strand, Sixty Years of Photographs, Aperture, pp. 30-32, 166-167)
Approximately fifteen prints of this image are known to exist, including, according to the Strand Archive, 5 x 6in. contact prints in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Hallmark Collection; The Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. At least two of these prints are variant images without the man in the doorway.
In 1953 - the same year as this image - Strand purchased his first enlarger and began making 8 x 10in. prints. Enlargements of this image would have been made later in the 1950s and examples can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are approximately five other known prints in private collections.
In addition to the print offered here, there is one other known work, printed in the 1960s, in the Paul Strand Archive. Slightly larger than the 1950s prints, prints made in the 1960s have a greater richness and clarity achieved by his preference for heightened contrast and toning.