Tommy Nigbor is a self-taught fine art photographer based in northern Wisconsin. He works in extreme winter conditions, blizzards, sub-zero temperatures, and deep night, using long exposure and handheld light painting to photograph objects that have lost their original function. His work unfolds in three chapters. Erasure Day uses fog and storm to strip the visible world to its threshold. Erasure Night uses restrained light painting to pull isolated objects out of absolute darkness. Remains documents what survived, either scarred by the damage or stripped down to something purer. All images are single-exposure, in-camera, with no compositing

Recognition

  • Editor's Choice, Minimalist Photography Awards

  • Honorable Mention, Minimalist Photography Awards

  • Nominee, People's Vote Award, Minimalism Category, reFocus Black and White Photo Contest 2026

  • Honorable Mention, After Dark, Night, Sky, and Shadow, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont, Juror: Lance Keimig. Selected for physical exhibition, July 2026.

  • Selected, Open Call: A Celebration of Contemporary Photography, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont, Jurors: Paula Tognarelli & Zach Hoffman. Selected for physical exhibition, August 2026.

  • Juried Exhibition, Praxis Photo Center, Minneapolis

  • Honorable Mention, Pablo Center at the Confluence, Eau Claire, Wisconsin

Artist Statement

I photograph objects that have lost their original purpose and become something stranger. Manmade or natural, it makes no difference. Not what they once were, not yet what they are becoming, but suspended between the two.

I have spent most of my life in northern Wisconsin, where winter reduces everything to its essentials and darkness comes early and stays long. This is where I learned to see what erasure looks like.

I go out into the conditions that are doing the erasing, searching through blizzards, fog, and sub-zero darkness for what is being lost. When I find it, it feels like something that has always been there but has never been seen. Sometimes what erases isn't weather or time, but absence itself, an object still holding its shape while the life that gave it purpose has simply gone.

The Erasure series moves through three states of disappearance. In daylight, fog and weather strip objects down to their last remaining form. At night, a handheld light cuts through absolute darkness, isolating whatever still holds shape. And finally, Remains looks at what endures. These are the objects and living things that have survived winter, collapse, and reclamation. Some emerge scarred, bent, or broken by what erased them. Others are stripped down to what they always were beneath everything erasure took.

This is the threshold I work within.