Ventura was born in Notaresco, a little village in the hills between the Gran Sasso mountain and the Adriatic Sea. After completing secondary school, Ventura moved to Bologna to study agronomy at university. In those formative years at university he become interested in photography, and produced his first professional works as a photographer. After completing his degree at the university, Ventura worked briefly as an agronomist in a vineyard in Tuscany, where, eventually, he finally took the decision to work as a photographer, full-time. He moved to Madrid, where he started to explore and develop his photographic language.Ten years ago, he started to work in the field of development in collaboration with several NGOs and UN agencies, with a focus on the Middle East. Ventura has held several exhibitions of his work, including "Suspended Lives", a controversial work on Palestinian women political prisoners, which was launched in Madrid in 2011.
He is currently based in New York.