Nick Ortoleva

“I can sort of play guitar.”

- Fun Fact about Nick

Artist statement

More often than not, I feel as though I am watching life go by from a third person point of view. Dissociative, detached, and feeling out of body, I don't feel as though I am even present. It is an unruly feeling that consumes my everyday but I have learned that it is best to embrace this skewed perception, rather than fight against it. 

The fragmentation of my perception of the present is rendered similarly to that of looking through the viewfinder of a camera, reflected and refracted through what seems to be a series of convex glasses, further being distorted and altered via a focal ring. Small details that might normally be unseen catch my eye through this tunnel vision focus. I feel a need for a visual record, an index, which is where the work initially situates itself. 

In the Middle of Uncertainty with My Arms Opened Wide is a window into my distorted world through my eye, where I aim to represent what living with this dissociative state is like. My camera acts as a tool of clarity in between this grounded reality and this third person, out of body point of view. This embrace of the two materializes into moments and glimpses of a skewed in-between point. My ongoing project immediately addresses myself, and where I stand in the world amidst this intersection, by using a sequence of images that are dependent on my unreliable, dissociative memory.

In this search, patterns and forms repeat, naturally creating an order and by bringing these small details and fragments together I aim to composite a large, singular scene, in a world of chaos. Orbs of light and portals into other worlds,  just removed from our reality and are often subtle, hidden, and require slow observing and contemplation when looking to uncover them. These subtle gateways and delicate moments unravel within our everyday life swiftly. The way that light diffuses through dew drops or how a wisp of gnats dance in the sun as it sets through the trees are fleeting but discoverable almost anywhere. 

I look for these pockets of light and know that these symbols are guiding me, like waypoints on a map would. The pathways I am rallied to follow are not only a means to look closer and keep me keen as I wonder but also act as a means to continue to document an untrustworthy memory.

Biography

Born in Seoul, South Korea. Grew up to Shrewsbury, MA

Since he first picked up a camera in middle school, Nick has been intrigued by the enigmatic nature

of the medium and the power of sequencing images to create a lyrical succession and visual narrative.

He often turns to the camera in an effort to shape a visual index of everyday experiences through his

lens. The work often depicts small, intimate moments depicting quiet details of often mundane

scenes.

Nick’s current working practice is driven by his wonderment and curiosity of patterns and associated

symbols that repeat and reveal themselves naturally. He aims to celebrate and render the world

around him through a series of abstracting light and the everyday. Through slow, contemplative

images he uses the camera to visualize, document, and remedy the sense of feeling at bay to,

unarmed, and receptive to the world he is an observer in.

Interview

With Jennifer Y. Collins

I’ve known Nick since freshman year when we took the same photo elective, Drawing with Light. We were also in the same Sophomore Studio I class together. I just thought he was this kid who was really into portraits and fashion and editorial photos, but I could tell that there was something great about this person, something that was just hiding under the surface. And, I’m not going to lie, this made him kind of intimidating to me. But over these past two years I was able to get to know him better and I’ve been fortunate to see him grow into this phenomenal, hardworking photographer creating great project after great project and seeing him branch out and take photos of nature and landscapes as well as portraits.

On a gloomy and rainy Tuesday afternoon, I sat down with Nick, over zoom, and I was able to pick his brains about his thesis project and about his practice.

Jennifer: What led you to photography? How did you start? Were there any other mediums you were interested in?

Nick: Growing up I was always interested in art over anything else whether it be in middle school or highschool. I remember I took a week long art summer camp at a college when I was a lot younger and we did painting and clay so that was always on the backburner, but I don’t remember what got me into photography in particular. It started with me taking photos on my iPod Touch that I’d gotten and I was always trying to document little moments whether it be a family trip up to New Hampshire or me running around the woods behind my house with my friends. I was always wanting to document very personal moments. From there I asked for a small point and shoot camera for a family trip. I also think that a lot of me wanting to document things came from a lot of my close friends and the little community we had created like going to our friend’s bands, playing basement shows, and watching skateboarding videos with my friends in their basement back in middle school. I got a Canon Rebel and followed them around while they were skating. Around that time I was interested in fashion and fashion photography and how skateboarding and fashion came together. I feel like that was the core of sort of what got me interested in documenting people and place and each one of my friends individually.

Jennifer: I just wanted to comment on that and how I’ve seen you early on when we were sophomores and the images you were taking were very editorial, fashion, and portraits and then to just see you grow into this really conceptual, kind of like the opposite like taking portraits of nature and landscapes, is just so cool to see. So I just wanted to say that.

Nick: Thank you!

Jennifer: What led you to this project?

Nick: I feel like I totally did a one eighty and I pivoted really hard. Before, a lot of my work was portraits and people that were a part of my community whether that be friends or family, and I remember from the end of junior year I had stressed all summer into senior year about my thesis. I thought that it needed to be this grandiose thing, this massive thing. I started thinking about it junior year and I had this huge project laid out where it was strangers and people and place. I started working on the project and I didn’t feel great about what I’m doing. For the first few weeks of senior year in the fall, I would just go out and try to make as many photos as I could of everything. I started to land on these smaller moments, these smaller instances, and little windows into this other world that really peaked my interest. Even then I was really hesitant still to be like, “I don't know if this is what I want to be doing or if this is what I should be doing.” But I soon got really comfortable with it and also felt like it was really fulfilling. It was like this feeling that I started to work around and this type of work I didn’t think I could do, or should do. So it was a lot of growing and feeling comfortable in this new and abstract way of working. 

Jennifer: Do you have to be in a very specific headspace to create these images? That also rolls into my next question: What’s usually your process when making images? Is there music you listen to? Or maybe you don’t listen to music? Podcasts …? Are there specific places you go to photograph in?

Nick: At the core of the work now I'm sort of trying to paint a window into dissociation and my own mental health. To show the lows and highs, the extreme opposites of feeling really great and then having these really low lows. A lot of the work stems from this dissociative, out of body feeling that if it was on a scale it would be on the lower part of the scale; this sort of tougher parts. It's a little bit easier to visualize and conceptualize certain types of images at a moment where there's not as much clarity in my mind. At least that's how I feel with it because I’m trying to show this distorted world. It helps to be a little more removed from reality because dissociation feels like a removal from reality like I'm present but I'm not super present. 

Music is a huge part of my everyday life. I'm constantly listening to music. It's a really powerful resource because it can change emotions, feelings, inspire and bring clarity. Music for me can really exaggerate feelings too. It’s definitely something whether I go home and I’m driving to a location, I’m listening to music. Or if I'm on a walk, walking is a really huge part of my process, I’m usually listening to music. I go home pretty often, or try to, to make images because it allows me to be in larger landscapes and find these little weirder moments. But it’s not location specific, there’s not one place the work needs to be made in for me. Oftentimes I will go home and go to certain spots I have before, places that I’m more comfortable or familiar in and sort of know where I’ve been and where I haven’t, which I feel like helps a lot. None of the images need to be made in a certain place or spot or time of day. A lot of it is just me going somewhere and walking around and seeing what I see. 

Jennifer: I’ve also noticed that you carry around a notebook with you (which your new one I’m jealous of). Is writing an important part of your process? 

Nick: Writing is really important in my practice and not only in my practice but in everything in general. I feel like it’s super important. I like writing short form and personal pieces of writing, narrating personal experiences. Writing is a huge part of my process because I can lay out all of my thoughts out at once on one sheet of paper or several sheets of paper physically, which I think is important too. Sometimes I’ll write on my phone in Notes, but writing for me makes most sense because I’m not confined to having a line of text. I can mind map and I can connect different segments of writings with a line and make these big spider webs of all of my thoughts. I feel like that allows me to connect all of my thoughts all at once. It also helps me to remember things, particularly having to write physically. It’s definitely been important and rambling on a piece of paper is how I start to connect all the dots basically because I feel like normally my mind is just this chaotic cloud of single words and tuts and I know they all connect somehow, but writing allows for me to connect them all and shuffle them into an order.

Jennifer: Do you usually write first then make images or do you make images then write to understand them?

Nick: It goes both ways. Sometimes I’ll write for a bit and create a bulleted list of images I know I have and images I feel like are missing. Sometimes I make all of the images, break them down descriptively, or by what kind of emotions they bring up, and then I connect them. So it definitely goes both ways. Sometimes I write before I take images to plan them out and sometimes I’ll take images and write about them to find what order they go in or what place they fit into. So it depends. My making process has no specific way I go about doing it, it’s dependent on the day.

Jennier: I’ve noticed that you’re really interested in and have made a lot of photo books, especially since you’ve taken Emily Sheffer’s book class last year. What is your approach when making a book? And do you see this project becoming a book?

Nick: Emily’s hand making photo book class opened up a really great window for me and I began to look at the medium as a physical object. Obviously we make prints of our work, but I feel like it’s generally not this physical thing you can hold. That class got me really excited about the book as an object and how this material can be made into this 3D sculptural thing you can hold. So that got me really excited about books in general whether it be a photo book or design book or a small book of poems or short stories. It also demanded for a lot of books to be made in a lot of different ways where it was more material based than concept based. So I think it was really great for us to try out all of these different ways and forms that different photos or the same photos could be made in different ways. But for me to go about making a book it fluctuates with what I want the final form to be. I haven't made a book in a while actually, since that class, but I’ve been thinking a lot about a couple different ideas. But I think you can take a few different things whether it be the material or the content of the book or the sort of material aspect of the book and that can shift the direction I would go about making a book. I recently got this book called Somewhere 2017 to 2023 by Sam Youkillis and that’s gotten me really excited about the content and it was all iPhone screenshots. The book was a little bit larger than a phone, there were all full bleed images and it wasn’t about how optically refined the pictures were, it was simply about this handheld book. With this sort of thing, and what I’ve been thinking about recently, is there was this big archive of content and then they were like, “Okay what would make the most sense in putting this content in somebody’s hand as this object.” And they chose a small hand sized book that resembled a phone. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that, like which instances do the contents or material outweigh the other. I can see this project in a book too. I feel like too certain work or certain projects lend themselves to books and some don’t. I’m not sure, I think I’d like a book with this project, but I don’t know if it would necessarily lend itself to a book or if it did it would have to be more of a book as an object than a book as a book. I play a lot with scale and how I display for crits like with different sizes, and there’s never any borders, it's all full bleed, so I’m not sure.

Jennifer: How did you come up with your title?

Nick: I like really long titles. I basically like titles as a sentence. Not all my titles have been super long, but I like to address everything within the project to set a tone. I want it to be informational enough for it to be that you could just read the title and know what’s going on or at least with this particular project. The title is In The Middle Of Uncertainty With My Arms Open Wide. At the very beginning of the project I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know if this was right. I didn’t know if this was going to be anything. I had no idea, but I very quickly learned to just be accepting of the uncertain, to really embrace it, which the embrace is the “Arms Open Wide.” This whole project I still don’t really know, but it's about embracing this thing that I feared for so long which is the unknown and that’s so terrifying. That title and this project has helped me to really embrace it and be really receptive to it even though it’s a really scary thing.

Jennifer: Where do you see yourself, photographically, in the next 5 years? What are your goals? What do you hope to do?

Nick: I’m not really sure, I mean I think my brain has been going a million miles a minute trying to figure out where I need to be, what I need to be doing just to kick start everything. I want to have a studio practice, and I want to have a little studio with a big printer and I'd love to make books and sort of have that as my working practice. I’ve also been pretty interested lately in the idea of working in a gallery helping with exhibitions or curatorial stuff too. For my own practice, if I can alongside working, I can keep making the work I’m making at the pace I am now, which I know will be pretty hard. I also really want to have a group of people I can come back to crit with or check in with. Something community based for sure if it’s not my immediate practice. I think too if we’re living way in the future where like there’s no boundaries, my goal is to have a photo book store that’s a cafe, like a work space, and in the back there’s a small artist publication or a studio. Like a studio in the back and in the front is this cafe with art books! That’s my end goal. 

*In response to his own question to me: Where would you want to be in the world? It could be anywhere doing whatever you are doing.

Nick: Since I visited Europe that’s all I'm really thinking about. If you'd asked me two years ago where I’d want to be, I’d say LA. If you'd asked me a year ago where I’d want to be I’d say NY, but now I’m like, “Europe!” Everything’s connected, it feels a lot more accessible to me to get from one county to another pretty easily and that’s so cool to me.