First Friday’s ARTScrawl led me to The Artistic Image gallery for the opening reception of a new photographic exhibition by Donatella Davanzo. This exceptional show allows the viewer to experience the beauty and history of Venice while understanding the work of celebrated photographer Donatella Davanzo.
An anthropologist and documentarist photographer, Davanzo has specialized in the study of North American Southwestern Natives’ spatiality. Since her field researches, begun in 1997, she has been documenting settlements and ceremonial spaces, with particular attention to the relationship between traditional organizations and issues of the surrounding environment already dealt with in the first photographic exhibitions held by the Italo-American Association in Trieste, Looking around Arizona (1997) and View of Life from the Southwest (2000), and in the following lectures and publications, both in Italy and at the University of New Mexico. Today, Davanzo is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at UNM. 
Her current exhibition, Venice and its Carnival, includes more than 20 images taken during Davanzo’s multiple visits to the Venice from her home town of nearby Trieste since 2007, plus a slide show of 100 more images of masks. The exhibit includes several photos of Venice itself, included by the photographer to contextualize the mask images. Venetian masks are made of leather, porcelain or with the original glass technique, simple in design and decoration and often with a symbolic and practical function.
Be sure to make time in your busy holiday schedule to view this one of kind photographic bonanza. Venice and its Carnival will hang through January 31, 2014 at The Artistic Image, The Cardenas Arts Center, 1101 Cardenas Drive NE, Suite 202 & 206, Albuquerque, NM, 505.554.2706, http://www.PhotoArtNM.com.
