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The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto said, "However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real." Jean Baudrillard contemporaneously described the "precession of simulacra" as the way in which simulacra have come to precede reality. This work exists in relation to these two ideas. Drawing on nostalgia for gaming and photography of the American landscape, this project teases our perception, challenging us to pick apart each photo's tells. GPUs are transitioning from niche products for gamers, to increasingly central components of an AI-driven society, dragging along conversations about the resource demands. The technologies that render game landscapes with increasing detail fuel the increasing precarity of the environment they replicate. The resulting photographs are haunted by questions about a reality where only simulacra remain.
