How does one make sense of a place, even one as small as Luzzara, that has witnessed such intense and focused visual documentation? There is an inherent and lingering nostalgia that needs to be confronted and overcome in such an undertaking. Mr. Maialetti tips his hat, visually, to his predecessors by photographing the few remaining elderly women Strand had met six decades earlier. His portrait of four men and a bicycle placed theatrically in front of a building and staring at the viewer is a visual homage to both Strand and the Lusettis, one that asks us to consider history and change in this specific location.

As the title of his book suggests, Mr. Maialetti offers not simply “another look” but a personal take. While the collection opens with the river and Luzzara’s rural outskirts, it is Italian town life that is featured and celebrated by his sympathetic eye. In more than one of his images, arcaded porticos and building facades are graced by elongated shadows created by the storied Italian sunlight. The viewer is made privy to the quotidian spaces of the market, the cafe, the barber shop, and other locations where men, women and children participate in the cherished realm of Italian public life.

Some of the many pleasures of Mr. Maialetti’s engaging works are the various portraits of everyday townspeople photographed meeting the viewer with resolute gazes, greeting the visitor with smiles and laughter, asking us to look anew at Luzzara and its inhabitants. From youths gamboling in the streets to elders seated on benches, the photographer offers a panoply of Italian life in the 21st century.