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the Mother Road through New Mexico.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
As explained by the Project Director, Donatella Davanzo, Ph.D.
The project has been awarded a grant through the National Park Service, Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program and a sponsorship from John Gaw Meem Archives of Southwestern Architecture, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
ABOUT THE CONNECTIONS
“Route 66 Connected” adopts a framework based on three key factors that historically characterized the life of the road — Tangibility, Symbolism, and Ethnicity.
By examining the roadside facilities through the specific aspects of these core themes at the same time, the project proposes a distinct perspective to offer an innovative and comprehensive vision of the road’s heritage. The main purpose of this three-lines exploration is to get behind the surface appearance of the original properties to uncover how the contemporary Route 66 creates connections with its historical narratives and how it preserves them for the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Italian American anthropologist and documentary photographer, Donatella Davanzo awarded her doctorate in American Studies at University of New Mexico (USA) in 2018 after accomplishing a master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology (2004), masters in Communication (2002) and in Cultural Anthropology (2002), and a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy (2001) in Italy.
Her anthropological works focus on the connection between communities and their own landscape using the method of visual ethnography and the applied research to document the organizations of spatiality. Considering photography as a distinctive ethnographic tool to visually document cultural and social aspects, Davanzo explored and recorded the Native American communities and sites in the Southwest area and the acequia, the traditional water management in New Mexico. In the meantime, she has taken part in Italian projects focusing on social and cultural aspects, such as traditional Venetian crafts and the culture of water in that region, and the social work of the clown-doctors.
In her first book, Tango In Venice. Expression Of A Rite, published in 2011, she documented tango dancers from an anthropological perspective framing people, their use of space, and tango dance as a ritual. In her second book, International CultoMusica. In The Ethno-Photographic Account Of Donatella Davanzo, she documented eleven different religious cults still present in Trieste (Italy) during as many music concerts. Besides the many exhibitions in Italy and abroad, her photographic works have also been published in essays, articles, and artistic monographs. In addition, she worked as a photojournalist by the Italian Public Administration in Trieste (Italy).
During her doctoral studies at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM), she also attended and completed the Historic Preservation and Regionalism graduate certificate program in the School of Architecture and Planning. In urban contexts, her photography focuses on the historic section of the original Route 66 in New Mexico (project “Route 66 Connected”– 2022-2026), updating her 2016-2018 visual documentation included in her doctoral dissertation.
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Drawing from photographic and anthropological experiences in Italy and in the US, she also carries out didactic and training teachings about visual ethnographic methodologies in the anthropological field.