Drew Nikonowicz’s photographic project This World and Others Like It investigates the role of the 21st century explorer by combining computer modelling 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 role-playing, 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.

Drew Nikonowicz (born in St. Louis Missouri, 1993) earned a BFA degree from the University of Missouri – Columbia in 2016. In 2015 he received the Aperture Portfolio Prize and the Lenscratch Student Prize. Nikonowicz recently completed a one-year residency at Fabrica Research Centre in Italy, and now lives and works in the United States in Saint Louis, Missouri.

This World and Others Like It is one of the photographic researches selected by  Domusweb among the Gabriele Basilico Prize in Architecture and Landscape Photography 2018 candidates. The Prize intends to support the growth of visual languages in photography among a new generation of artists.