April 23 – June 29, 2025
The Griffin Museum is excited to present an exhibition by Nick Ortoleva, featuring photographs exploring identity, memory, place and family ties. This exhibition is located at our satellite location Griffin @ WinCam, located in Winchester through June 29, 2025.
It’s been 22 years since I’ve been in Korea. It’s been 22 years since I’ve taken a breath of this hot humid air. It’s been 22 years since I’ve heard the bustle of the busy city streets filled with vendors and buses and cars whizzing by. I don’t remember my time here, but know that I was here for three months before I boarded a plane leaving Incheon International Airport to Logan Airport in Boston.
I look to the photographs Mom took on her trip, to get Thomas, my younger brother, from her trip here 18 years ago. I use her fading, 4×6″ prints on some old drug store RC paper
as these points of reference as I continue to map out the city for myself. Amongst trying to sort out the rush of feelings in the place I was born, I continue to walk, landmark to landmark. As I stomp through the late summer heat, I stop to make notes and photograph, to expand the visual map of the city I have set out to make. I follow an itinerary my map guides me through, stopping into markets and parks to continue to familiarize myself with new sights and smells.
As a note taker, image maker, and writer, I sift and reflect on my experience through notes I’ve jotted down and personal essays, to keep record of my own story and write my piece. My place of origin is a piece of me that I had little information on. Something that I was certain about is that in returning to Seoul to learn about, observe, and understand the contemporary landscape would allow me to continue to discover what place can hold for the individual.
Nick Ortoleva (b. Seoul, Korea) grew up in Central Massachusetts and currently resides in Boston. He received a BFA in Photography from MassArt (24’).
Ortoleva uses the camera to shape a fragmented narrative that often reflects on personal experiences and relationships with the communities where he has found kinship. He frequently revisits stories passed down through family, as he continues to write a memoir of his own; warping perception, color, and light. In his most recent work, he explores family archives and returns to Seoul for the first time meditating on what place can hold for the individual, as a means to discover Oneself.
The Griffin @ WinCam is located at 22 Swanton Street in Winchester at WinCam (Winchester Community Access and Media) Hours of opening – 11am to 7pm Monday thru Thursday / 11am to 5pm Friday. Closed on Weekends.
