Danny Ghitis
Deep Valley, Dark Days
Deep Valley, Dark Days August 2014. Over the course of three artist residencies in upstate New York, I developed this series of photographs, whose form is less important than its function: catharsis. The span of this project overlapped with the slow demise of a seven-year romance. It began with getting off at the last stop on the commuter train from Manhattan, leaving me neither here nor there. I arrived at a strip of land lost in purgatory, struggling to recover from a series of economic failures. However, the environment is not directly related to the purpose of the work. It provides fertile terrain for exploring themes that weighed heavily on my conscience: love and loss, exile and redemption, failure and success, wisdom and innocence. I selected fragments of reality to weave together a fantasy that reflected my feelings back at me. I allowed my imagination to interpret that evidence and discovered a place that negotiates with its history to understand its many potential futures.