Nicholas Gaffney
ORBITER | To photograph something is, often, to choose to make a seemingly insignificant subject meaningful. Significance can be found in the eeriness of wooden people placed in a corn maze, or in the beauty of an old amusement park ride called Orbiter.
I tend to make images about the places around me, wandering with my camera in the fairly specific landscape of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Upstate New York. For this series, my thematic definition of “Orbiter” is something or someone that searches and observes over the surface of the things. My camera allows me to become an Orbiter, letting me examine my environment while remaining slightly removed and distanced from it. My photographs aren’t empty, but there’s a kind of emptiness in the subjects I’m drawn to, which the right combination of light and composition can fill. My desire and anxiety to create keeps me searching and hoping for something new to photograph and make significant. ngaffney.net
