Nikolai Ischuk stretches photography to its limits, focusing on the relationship between light, space, and object. He relies on abstract shapes and strong lines in the photographs, sculptures, and mixed-media works he creates. Ischuk is unconcerned with representing any particular image, instead exploring the limits of form and how photography relates to 20th-century modernism. In his series “Indeterminate Objects,” he transforms discarded photographs into sculptures, questioning the basic nature of photography by asking whether a photograph stripped of its representational purpose still has meaning. Ischuk is interested in both digital and analog photography, and often fuses them together in his work. He was the first non-documentary photographer to win the British Journal of Photography’s Award for a photo from his “Offset” series (2011–13). In “Offset,” he uses photographs of friends and family and digitally separates the two central figures—such as a couple kissing or dancing—leaving a void in the middle. He was born in Moscow and now lives in London.