Karo`s photography: Diorama Photography

Making Dioramas is a wonderful hobby that can exhibit an extraordinary wide range of creativity. You can make a diorama of almost any scene your mind can imagine.

It can be almost anything as long as it captures a moment in time - displays multiple objects and shows us a scene.

There are many different types of dioramas so let’s take a look on some Photographers who create their own realities...

Lori Nix

I saw Lori Nix’s photographs online -scenes of strange interior environments abandoned and in the slow process of being reclaimed by nature.

Lori Nix, Kansas born photographer, builds miniature dioramas by hand, mostly from scratch.

Nix’s work doesn’t just provoke or inspire by virtue of the talent expressed in each scene, it actually has the ability to frighten you with its illusion.

Her work is so varied and she have so many images rich with content, that for me was hard to chose my favourites, till I saw her series of : “Accidentally Kansas”. Funny and same time sad story's from she`s birthplace.

Camera - originally used to capture and document reality, has evolved into a tool which aids in imagination. Nix's attention to detail is provocative and obsessive.

As you can see from video Lori it’s not typical photographer, she is also a gifted miniaturist! Her series entitled “The City” (you will find it on she`s website) is a perfect example of what her creative mind is capable of. Creating dioramas in her small Brooklyn studio and then photographs the tiny scenes, in my opinion it’s truly amazing.

And Nix is not alone either. Some other great minds are making miniatures and doing equally fascinating things with them.

http://www.lorinix.net/

http://www.edelmangallery.com/exhibitions/2011/nix/nixshow2011.htm

http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/nix/index.html

http://www.exploringcolorphotography.com/lori_nix.html

Thomas Doyle

Nix’s good friend - New York artist Thomas Doyle also creates small scale diorama sculptures that are meticulous, intimate, and enigmatic.

“I made dioramas as a boy and always wanted to return to it; later when I was casting about for a medium that would hold my interest I stumbled back into this one and found a perfect fit:” says artist.

There is a hyper-real quality to the works that is a result of Doyle’s strong attention to detail, proportion, and form and the works seems to appear somewhere between illusion and a sort of phenomenological reality.

Doyle’s interest in themes of detachment and isolation can be seen throughout the works – many end up having an unknown and upsetting tone.

Using ordinary materials found around the house, tiny hand-painted figures surrounded by domesticity and destruction he creates frozen moments - mysterious and engaging. Time stops, figures are mid-stride – often on the verge of some discovery – and a natural response is to wonder what happened before, and what will happen after. There is no prescribed answer, and so control of destiny is handed over to the viewer.

The sense of loss and a brooding darkness is present in almost every piece, where homes dangle on sheer cliffs, or are surrounded by apocalyptic waste.

Through the disturbing and contradictory atmospheres of his dioramas, Doyle shows us how small and precarious each of our lives really is. The confined human figures inside these works express a frozen sense of time, enclosed within spaces from which they cannot escape. The viewers on the other hand are left on the periphery, which allows one to stare at a scene that can be controlled through the gaze, but makes it impossible to really understand the mysteries and tragedies hidden within.

http://www.thomasdoyle.net/

http://astrumpeople.com/thomas-doyle-sculptures-delicate-genre-of-art/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/19216/thomas-doyle-miniature-catastrophic-glass-contained-memories.html

Terada Mokei

Continue my research and mowing forward from depressing images above I like you pay some attention to Terada Mokei - Japanese artist and photographer who loves to take photos of tiny objects and make them look bigger on the photo without any external editing tools.

Terada Mokei – specializing mainly in the miniature type of photography not only by taking photos, but also making the main part of it.

Populating the paper environments, Terada's version of the modern man and his archetypal family consist of featureless cookie-cutter silhouettes of male, female and child figures. Each series places a variation of the family in different scenarios, ranging from park activities to earthquake-disrupted dinners and office obsequiousness, all packaged in single-collared sheets of pre-cut parts, reminiscent of model die-cuts.
In my opinion is quite cool original idea that’s of course if you have plenty time- as that kind of construction, and also photography takes a lot of time and patience.

"As the accessory kits are assembly kits, I designed them to be fun for you to do so, however I would be just as pleased if you are so inclined to just enjoy envisioning their unassembled potential as well," says Terada.

This collection of tear-off paper forms themed kits currently available as New York, Housing, Office and Construction Site, Orchestra, Tokyo, Christmas and Zoo. The assembly instructions are as meticulously rendered as the figures. If anyone interested, could make and share some of your own story.

Terada Mokei also features a line of Architectural Model Greeting Cards. Pop-up figures with word-bubble expressions say it when you can't with this sentimental stationary.

http://www.teradamokei.jp/en/
http://www.teradamokei.jp/en/about/
http://trendland.com/nyc-paper-subway-station-by-terada-mokei/#

http://dpshots.com/photo-inspiration/beautiful-miniature-photographs-by-terada-moke.html

Vincent Bousserez

Found this artist only by chance while streaming in net about miniature photography…when come across one of Louis Vuitton pages. Everybody knows Louis Vuitton - he has always been quite playful and creative when it comes to promoting their products and specially when partnered up with Paris-based photographer Vincent Bousserez – creating lovely fun photos.

The Parisian is a creative director at a marketing agency by day, but the creator of Plastic Life the rest of the time, carrying his 'little people' with him wherever he goes as I read inspired by a trip to a miniature model shop, Bousserez started planting miniature people against everyday objects to make them look like something else.

"That day I saw miniature trains, houses, trees and I was immediately captured by these little people," the artist explains.

"I stared at them thinking: I should choose one and shoot him in different places, in different situations. And I did."

"I take [the figures] on holiday, I take them everywhere. I could be anywhere and see stuff around me and the inspiration just comes naturally. I am like a child!"

Photographer Vincent Bousserez has artfully created an entire world of miniature plastic people that live hyperkinetic lives working and playing hard.

They hail unseen cabs, wash windows, even as they stand reading the newspaper presumably waiting for a bus that never comes.

Also toilet roll becomes a snowy slope, a discarded cigarette butt becomes a target for toxic removal and an upturned bottle lid becomes a bath. I couldn’t stop watching all his created stories. A sense of humour runs through all of Bousserez's work, making it the kind of artistic photography everyone can appreciate and could be a great inspiration for such original work.

Personally one of my favourite`s - simple - but with a hint of humour. He creates ironic and poetic scenes using macro photography as a result making little tiny people living in the world surrounded by lifeless giant objects.

See the world through the eyes of miniature people shows us some beautiful scenes from another point of view, where the world seems as ordinary as our very own but in a smaller scale!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bousserez/

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/vincent-bousserez-miniature-louis-vuitton-photos-060512

http://www.yatzer.com/Plastic-life-by-Vincent-Bousserez

Florian Tremp

Florian Tremp - same as V. Bousserez lives double life. By day he is in Switzerland-based magazine editor, by night - designer and self-taught diorama photographer extraordinaire from New York .

His amazing 1:87 miniatures are perfectly staged as bloody crime scenes, police car chases, CSI investigations, shoot outs, and murders in progress and so as tranquil little detailed scenes of diners glowing in a rural dusk and steel trailer homes shimmering in the night.

“No Country for Small Men” series is one of his best projects yet. It recreates farmlands, deserts and abandoned sites. It’s almost as if he’s literally taken a chunk of the real world and shrunk it down to mini size. From the construction of the scenes to the photographs of the sets, Florian Tremp displays an extraordinary creative mind. All of his images are of dioramas that he has hand crafted himself.

At first glance, it feels like you are looking at a still photos from a movie scene, but it’s not. They are actually images of miniature models.

Florian also makes amazing use of lighting to set the mood of each scene, and arranges them in interesting compositions to pull you in.

No much I can find out, most of the pages are in German, what I really not good at all. Anyway I am entranced by this kind of modelling what lead the imagination to produce such work.

It’s good to know that there are someone out there, documenting something like this, takes time to do so and also take great photographs.

The amazingly detailed miniature scenes above were shot by Canon EOS 400d. As part of a set called ‘No Country for Small Men’ I find them to be extremely entertaining to look over. Many more for you, who`s ever interested to admire on his photo stream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clipse/sets/72157623347296023/
http://www.gentside.com/miniature/crime-scene-investigation-i_pic39091.html

Related links: