The images in this book, taken at the Venice Carnival in 1996, 97, and 98 by the Greek photographer Pericles Boutos, illuminate and unmask this age-old Venetian tradition. Following in the footsteps of the great French-American tradition of photographers like Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand, Boutos brings to the fore a Carnival which has lost, along with color, its very identity. That his images capture the contemporary reality of this much photographed spectacle without any cliche or shopworn excess is a testament to the photographer, who portrays with deceptive ease the behind-the-scenes rituals of the carnival's baroque proceedings.