Gabriel Ortiz

“Humans leave their mark, and the earth carries it forward as an archive” -Jussi Parikka

Street and urban environments are commonly mediated through Google Maps and Street View, as well as satellite images that are rendered in 180° panoramic views. My photographic images document these multiple ways of viewing public space.

Through using various image making technology platforms, my artwork builds a panoramic view of lived environments. Although the streets themselves represent a physical built environment they also have a psychological presence in the human psyche, one that is also permeated by digital technology. Often we forget that the materials that enable these technological developments linked to seeing and mapping are drawn from natural environments. My photographic practice points to the weight and materiality of these technologies which are supposedly streamline and seamless.

I am also interested in how it takes a lot of resources, both labour and mineral, to put a satellite into orbit. In the process of consuming images we can become alienated from the modes of how they were produced; we take for granted processes of extraction, fabrication and trade. Like the Anthropocene, where traces of human production can now be detected throughout all geographical layers, my photographs are layered like a palimpsest of ‘natural’ environments produced with my own camera, as well as images taken from mediated spaces such as Google Maps and Google Earth.

Although the world has largely been reduced to consumable objects and images there is still an earthly grounded connection. I am interested in how photographs can enhance how these landscapes of human intervention are also an echo of the natural world. I question how our ecosystem is sacrificed for capitalist needs; I ask what would our relationship to the environment be if we were to treat inanimate objects as animated entities?