Artist Statement

From the series, Personal Ecologies. ©2013 Dave Ortiz
From the series, Personal Ecologies. ©2013 Dave Ortiz

For a proposed show at Soho Photo Gallery in June 2013, Personal Ecologies:

It has been determined that no two people see color the same way. It can also be said that no two people see the world in the same way. Our memories are revised again and again by new experiences. Experiences in turn are the filters with which we witness the world. I am acutely aware of this as I create pictures of my immediate environments, the landscapes that I pass through as I go about my daily routines. What catches my attention surely has been attenuated by my childhood experiences, by my beliefs concerning the sacred and profane, mythology, science and politics, as well as myriad other phenomena that I am not aware of as coloring my worldview. Photography is a process of self-discovery.

Concomitantly a scientist once explained to me the poetry of a concept in quantum physics known as decoherence. At a very basic level all is probability. Everything has some chance of coming into being and it is not until it is seen that all the probabilities of being collapse into one definite state. In a sense then, what I see and thus photograph are my own private creations, my own personal ecologies.