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Salvatore Mancini

From RI Public Radio:

Providence, R.I. – It was 1970 when photographer Salvatore Mancini and a friend packed up their jeep with cameras, film, and developing equipment and set out on an extended trip across the U.S. Their mission: to visit the sites of the iconic landscape photographs they studied in school.

"So it was the Appalachians, Grand Canyon, New Mexico, Big Sur, Olympic peninsula, and it really was a pilgrimage," Mancini says.

Forty years on, Mancini and his cameras- have traveled to India, Cambodia his native Italy and a host of locations in between. In black and white, he's captured ancient rock drawings, a man washing the feet of a giant Buddha statue, and a boy with a rat perched on his shoulder in India. It's a career that's brought the Cranston-based photographer numerous recognitions, including Italy's prestigious Bolaffi award and a local Pell Award. Mancini's work's been exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, the Fogg Museum in Cambridge and the RISD museum of Art, among others.

An exhibit of Manicni's photographs is currently on display at Gallery Z on Providence's Federal Hill. The work includes prints of his ancient rock photos. Taken in the American southwest, they show primitive representations of animal and human forms dating back as far as 5,000 years ago.

Mancini says he's intrigued by the rock drawing because "an abstract thing made by man actually exists out in nature that's what captivates me like how, what, why?"

Part of what interests Mancini about his subject matter is how people pay homage to one another and places, and the similarities that exist from culture to culture. It's a theme he explored in a project that was inspired by local events.

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