Drew Nikonowicz is an artist from Saint Louis, Missouri who is currently living and working in Columbia, Missouri. His work employs computer simulations as well as analogue photographic processes to deal with landscape and exploration in contemporary photography. He is the winner of the 2015 Aperture Portfolio Prize, has been published in Der Greif Magazine’s A Processand has shown work at Photokina, Cologne.
This World and Others Like It investigates the role of the 21st century explorer by combining computer modeling with analogue photographic processes. Drawing upon the language of 19th Century survey images, I question their relationship with current methods of record making.
Thousands of explorable realities exist through rover and probe based imagery, virtual roleplaying, and video game software. Within the contemporary wilderness, robots have replaced photographers as mediators producing images completely dislocated from human experience. This suggests that now the sublime landscape is only accessible through the boundaries of technology.
