'American and Italian Landscape' and

'Con le Nostre Mani: With Our Hands'

Through Sept. 8, Museo ItaloAmericano

ITALIAN PHOTOGRAPHER LUCIANO Monti came to the United States in 1997 to conduct an experiment in landscapes. At national parks such as Death Valley and Yosemite, he found something that, for him, had been missing from his native terrain: uninterrupted, untrammeled nature. His pictures show awesome deserts, rock caverns, and sand dunes that extend endlessly in perfect geometric patterns, repeating without even a grain out of place. Monti shot a series of Italian landscapes after his return home, and in the gallery each American picture is cleverly juxtaposed with an Italian one, provoking connections and dissociations that might otherwise go unnoticed. The Italian images are more irregular and complex. They are devoid of actual humans but full of the evidence of human intrusion and of the vast changes people have wrought on the land. Hanging next to White Sand Dunes 5, Colli Euganei (an Italian vineyard in the fog) evokes a feeling of claustrophobia, of nature's wildness artificially confined in narrow rows. Old fishing nets protrude from a dry river bed in Delta del Po, and Harvest presents a snow-covered field of dead stalks left to rot after the tractors have rumbled through. Showing simultaneously in an adjacent gallery is "Con le Nostre Mani: With Our Hands," a photographic history of Italian Americans in the East Bay from 1860 through 1960. With plenty of text accompanying each picture, it's a fabulous, albeit brief, survey of Italian Americans' contributions to local industry. You'll see figments of Oakland's past, such as horse-drawn scavenger carts, and a few businesses that are still alive and well today, including G.B. Ratto's grocery and deli on Washington Street, which, judging by the photo, remains largely unchanged after more than 100 years.

Wed.-Sun., noon-5 p.m. (first Wed., noon-7 p.m.), Fort Mason Center, Building C, Marina at Laguna, S.F. $3, $2 students and seniors, free for 11 and under. (415) 673-2200. (Lindsey Westbrook)