In Paul Strand's footprints

On Tuesday, a major retrospective of the work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) opens at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which holds Strand's archive of 4,000 prints. The 250 in this show span his decades of work in milieus urban and natural, in places from Manhattan to Morocco.

One of those places was an Italian village whose very ordinariness captured Strand's imagination in 1953. Six decades later, David Maialetti made three visits to the village to record what had and had not changed. On Dec. 10 at the museum, he will show, and talk about, what he found.

LUZZARA, Italy - With a hint of a British accent, the woman's voice announces a right turn in 500 meters. Then, moments later, it insists, "Turn around." Then, "Turn left." Then, "Turn around."

After a 41/2-hour drive from Rome's Fiumicino airport on this day in 2013, the relationship between navigator and driver has soured. Now I am parked at a shuttered gas station outside tiny Luzzara, willing the spirit of Paul Strand to lead me into a place so remote the GPS has gone bonkers.

Sixty years earlier, Strand - arguably the 20th century's greatest photographer - used this town along the Po River to create a body of work that captured the quintessence of everyday rural Italian life. He and neorealist screenwriter Cesare Zavattini (The Bicycle Thief), born in Luzzara, collaborated on a book called Un Paese - "A Village" - published in 1955. In it, Strand defined the place and its people, and Zavattini gave voice to their personal stories.

In early 2013, I heard Amanda Bock, project assistant curator of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, give a talk at the Pen & Pencil press club about Strand and the museum's retrospective planned for this fall. I wondered what life was like in the village now. Was there anyone left who remembered Strand?

The book's cover photo, "The Family," depicts the Lusettis, a woman and five sons posed in a rustic doorway. It is Strand at his best, the heavily constructed image showcasing a perfectionist's attention to detail. But it resonates on another level, as one of Strand's most emblematic portraits: rural Italy after World War II.

Six decades on, the Lusetti family is gone, the iconic doorway hardly recognizable. A lean guard dog roams across the property line. The farm's new owners aren't interested in the past or its connection to Strand.

There isn't much to Luzzara. "That's exactly what he wanted," says Peter Barberie, the Art Museum's curator of photographs. "He wanted a place where people had to just live their lives." After three visits, I can understand his success here. The people are warm, engaging, with an inviting easiness.

As time has passed, so have all but three of his subjects. Angela Secchi, 70, was photographed as a 9-year-old, and was happy to recall the experience. The village's 90-plus former letter carrier, like her daughter, refused to share memories - her husband was murdered around the time Strand was there. To talk about it was too difficult.

But they did agree to let me photograph them.

From the barber to the cheesemaker to the old woman on her bicycle, all Luzzarans seem to understand that Paul Strand and Un Paese have given a deeper sense of meaning to their lives, and to their past.

View a gallery of more David Maialetti photos at www.inquirer.com/luzzara, and hear him talk about Luzzara at www.inquirer.com/villageEndText