Photographer Lori Nix

I was having a hard time trying to decide which image to post. All of the images in her series The City are quite amazing. At first I was intrigued as to where she stumbled upon these places, however, after reading through her website I’ve found that they are dioramas that she had constructed and photographed. 

“I began my photography career in college, working for the college newspaper. I started out as the darkroom printer and eventually became the photo editor. As the editor, it became quickly obvious that I was not much of a photojournalist. I didn’t have the gift of being at the right place to capture breaking news. I’m also horrible at portraiture as I am unable to capture the essence of the sitter. In college I studied ceramics and photography. With ceramics, you’re always building the object from scratch. This translated well in my photo studies, where my desire was to construct the image rather than find an existing one. Since my earliest days I have always worked with fabrication, either through darkroom manipulations or even room sized installations. My strength lies in my ability to build and construct my world rather than seek out an existing world. Inspiration comes from reading the daily newspaper The New York Times, science fiction paperbacks and magazine articles. I get most of my ideas during my morning subway commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan to go to my day job. Something about the morning light, the rocking of the subway, seeing the cityscape pass by opens my mind up to inspiration. I then research my ideas on the internet, buy reference books, then start sketching out the diorama. Sometimes I let months pass before beginning work, other times I start immediately. It all depends on how fully defined the image is in my head. Sometimes I see the final image immediately, other times I do a lot of research before committing to building the model.