Lori Nix’s City Diorama Photo Series Is An Apocalyptic Vision Of The Future

moray mair | Photography | October 11, 2012

Lori Nix‘s ‘City’ photo series is not what you think. They’re not strange images of old dilapidated buildings. Well they are but not real ones. They’re actually dioramas, the most incredible I have ever seen, and range in size from 20 inches to almost six feet in diameter taking up to seven months to build and three weeks to photograph.

‘City’ is an apocalyptic vision of the future, a post-human world in decay - and the subsequent reclaiming of the city by nature – that she’s been working on since 2005 and plans on continuing for the next few years. Here’s what she has to say about the work:

I have imagined a city of our future, where something either natural or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of it’s human inhabitants…these spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man’s encroachment. I am afraid of what the future holds if we do not change our ways regarding the climate, but at the same time I am fascinated by what a changing world can bring.

She has completed a number of similar projects and here’s what she says on her website about her process and the influences on her practice:

I am often asked questions about the inspiration for my work as well as my working process. As a ‘non-traditional’ photographer (I construct my subject matter rather than go find it) people find it hard to grasp what exactly it is that I do. And the fact that it is all done in front of the camera, with no digital manipulation, adds its own set of challenges. Building materials, lighting, issues of scale and space all become significant when you are recreating the world on a table top.

I am greatly influenced by landscape painting, particularly the Hudson River School of Painting which included the artists Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederich Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and the Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich. Each of these painters possessed characteristics of romanticism and the Sublime and it’s ability to create a state of mind and express intense emotions either through beauty or horror.