Nick Ortoleva

In the Middle of Uncertainty with My Arms Opened Wide | 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 present. It is an unruly feeling that I have learned to embrace, rather than fight against it.

My perception of the present is rendered similarly to 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.

In the Middle of Uncertainty with My Arms Opened Wide is a window into my distorted world, where I aim to represent what living with this disconnection is like. My camera acts as a tool of clarity while simultaneously blurring this grounded reality and this third person, out of body point of view. This embrace of the two materializes into contemplation, reflections, and glimpses of a skewed in-between point. There is a need for a visual record and through close examination, my ongoing project aims to address 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, I seek patterns to follow that naturally create an order and by bringing these fragments together I look to composite a large, singular scene. Orbs of light and portals into other worlds,  just removed from our reality and are often subtle, hidden, and require slow observing when looking to uncover them. These subtle gateways and delicate moments unravel within our everyday life swiftly just as light diffuses through dew drops or how a wisp of gnats dance in the sun as it sets through the trees. These moments are fleeting and demand an acute description but are discoverable almost anywhere. www.nickortoleva.com