$20
A collection of google satellite images captured from public domain. 2001-2025
by Jacob Ortega
Published by Petal Books
April 2026
9" x 6"
112 pages (perfect bound)
This untitled series explores American landscapes removed from their context, spaces where form and symbol emerge from our modern condition, rendered as works of pure aesthetic.
We watch humans attempt to shape the landscape that preceded them (or to reject it entirely) in a manifest-destiny pursuit of conquering the world in its whole. What remains is not the land itself, but its interpretation: fragmented, imposed, and endlessly reimagined.
This project reckons with Jean Baudrillard's notion of the map and the territory, where representation no longer reflects reality but begins to replace it.
Jacob Ortega seeks to adopt the perspective of the insane—or perhaps the most sound-minded—a group for whom nothing is coincidence, and symbols make visible the hidden mechanisms of society.
At its heart, this project is conspiratorial and speculative, an attempt to understand those on the never-ending journey of connecting the dots.
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