Inside Culture: Art and Class in the “American Home” by David Halle is a sociological study of what people hang on their walls. The two neighborhoods Mr. Halle examined in New York were the Upper East Side of Manhattan (rich, very rich) and Greenpoint in Brooklyn (working class, Polish, and Latino), and there are clear differences in what the inhabitants of those areas choose to look at. Landscape is the one taste they have in common. “Depictions of the landscape pervade the houses studied. Hills and mountains, meadows, oceans, rivers and bays, trees and bushes, skies that are clear, flecked with clouds, or darkened at night, suns rising or setting – such scenes, in endless combinations, are the most popular topic of the pictures on the walls of all social classes.” Examples of all the above can be seen in the exhibition “Paesaggio: Italian Landscape Photography” presently at the Keith de Lellis Gallery.

Mr. Halle writes, “Asked what attracts them to the landscapes on their walls, residents mention above all the tranquility of the subject matter. They like these pictures because they are “calm,” “restful”; they offer “solitude” and “quiet”; “they soothe.” That also would describe nearly all of the 48 black-and-white images by 16 photographers in the de Lellis show, although the gallery has extended the definition of landscape to include a few beach scenes and urban vistas. Most of the pictures date from the 1950s and 1960s – that is, after the turbulence of decades of Fascist governance and war, when calm would have been most appreciated. And unlike scenes of the massed inhabitants of Rome and Milan roaring their approval of Mussolini, these country sides are mostly uninhabited, or only barely peopled. If there is politics, the point is its absence.

These are handsome works, fastidiously made, as Italian works of hand tend to be. Consider Giuseppe Bruno’s “Asolano” (c. 1960), in which successive ridges of some low mountains recede in the distance in progressively lighter shades of gray. It is an overcast day and the ridges are seen in silhouette, slightly irregular, with individual trees discernable on the first two and a building perched on top of a small peak on the furthest. (The overcast sky, a common feature of most of the pictures in the exhibition, is an indication of their location in the north of Italy.) The mood of this picture is, as Mr. Halle would have it, “calm,” even serene, and the effect pleasurable. But very measured.

American landscapes typically deal with the immensity and majesty of the space (think of Ansel Adams’s pictures of Yosemite Valley), seek in nature a Druidic transcendence, or, nowadays, show how man has blighted the land. The building dimly seen on the crest of a hill in the far distance of Bruno’s “Asolano” is emblematic of a different attitude. The land of Italy has been cultivated by successive civilizations for millennia, and there is little memory of any of it being “virgin.” It is understood that the land is be subordinated to man’s purposes and will therefore be shaped to suit his ends; what is expected, however, is that this will be done well.

It is not surprising, then, that several of the landscapes are of furrowed fields. Giovanni Vanoni’s “Campo di Grano” (1955) shows long rows of young wheat undulating slightly as they recede in the distance. Again the sky is overcast and again the farthest point is occupied by buildings, this time the farmhouse. In Guido Fumo’s “Solchi” (c. 1955), we are on top of a furrowed hill looking down; at the bottom of the hill, the furrows rise up again on the next hill so we see more of them. The low sun, coming from the right, throws the furrows into a sharp pattern of highlights and shadows. We see how beautifully man, a farmer, has transformed the environment for his needful benefit.

A more startling example is Mario Giacomelli’s “Presa di Coscienza Sulla Natura” (“Becoming Aware of Nature,” 1970), in which the furrows weave in and out of some trees. There is something comic about it, like the New Yorker cartoon of two ski tracks impossibly split to go around a tree. But there is also something admirable in the determination to make the most of arable land. Another picture by Gia comelli with the same title, this one (c. 1980) is one of his famous series taken from airplanes; it shows the pattern of cultivation as an abstract tapestry. It is as if a tractor had been used to create a work of modern art.

Not every picture is a scene from Virgil’s “Georgics.” Stanislao Farri’s “Lago di Mantera” (c. 1965) shows a boy or young man with a fishing pole standing on a little spit of land in a shallow body of marshy water with clumps of reeds dispersed about. As in so many of these pictures, the sky is gray, giving a somber cast to the fisherman’s solitary pleasure. Augusto Cantamessa’s “Breve Orrizonte” (“Short Horizon,” c. 1955) is certainly a landscape, but so spectral as to be hard to describe. The horizon line is close to the bottom of the picture and across the horizon, at some distance, are two small bicycle riders. The field from front to back is set with thin tree trunks, which might be birch. But there are no branches on the trunks; they just snake up out of the ground unadorned. How came the trees to be so naked? The image is beautiful, but slightly disturbing.

There are pictures set in villages, like Giuseppe Bruno’s “Monte San Angelo” (1958) and others set on the outskirts of urban areas, like Giovanni Vanoni’s “Mercato Minore” (“Small Market,” c. 1955): pots, pans, ladles, and the back wheel of a bicycle silhouetted against a housing development. And Augusto Cantamessa’s “Untitled” (c. 1955), empty canvas beach chairs arrayed along a shore: Are the people waiting for the sun to come out before they take their places?

David Halle’s respondents told him that when they looked at their landscapes, it was like taking a brief vacation. Most of the pictures in this exhibition are day trips to a cherished countryside; the terrain is not spectacular, but it is fructuous, and the photographers, knowing that, show their appreciation.

Until February 12 (47 E. 68th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, 212-327-1482). Prices: $2,000-$5,000.