Lori Nix

Lori Nix is a NYC-based photographer. To digress briefly, a few days ago I wrote about Ray Caesar:

For those of you who haven’t worked with 3D software, imagine being a highly skilled painter who only paints on sculptures that you have built yourself from the armatures up. Now create lighting and atmospheric effects to make this all more realistic. Be sure not to make it look stiff or posed! OK, now take a photograph of it, taking depth of field, camera angle, and compositional values into consideration. The mind boggles, it truly does.

Well, Lori Nix does just that. She makes wee dioramas of terrible things then takes photos of them. Post-apocalyptic scenarios, accidents, natural disasters, and suchlike with the deftness of a photojournalist and the precision of a miniaturist.

Lori Nix – Ice Storm 1999

In my earliest work “Accidentally Kansas” I relied heavily upon manufactured models for railroad hobbyists. I used a shallow depth of field to give it a dreamy quality, like the fuzziness of memories…
The scenes I build today are mostly made by hand. … My scenes can be as small as 50×60 centimeters and as large as 182 centimeters in diameter. It takes approximately seven months to build and photograph a scene. I build it for one angle of view and never move my camera from that spot. I will change the lighting, the placement of the objects and re-shoot until I’m fully satisfied with the results. I shoot with an 8×10 large format camera and film. I print my own photographs quite large.

There is an inherent sense of humour about these works for all the gravity of the subject matter; the impression I get from Nix’s work is that these are meant to still look like dioramas, not “actual” events. The elements of modelling and play bring me back to my own childhood, setting up plastic army men in complex battles – pretty much your classic child-at-play scenario but with the gruesome reality of killing and dying implicit in the act of play itself.

Lori Nix – Library 2007

I am interested in depicting danger and disaster, but I temper this with a touch of humor. My childhood was spent in a rural part of the United States that is known more for its natural disasters than anything else. I was born in a small town in western Kansas, and each passing season brought its own drama, from winter snow storms, spring floods and tornados to summer insect infestations and drought. Whereas most adults viewed these seasonal disruptions with angst, for a child it was considered euphoric. Downed trees, mud, even grass fires brought excitement to daily, mundane life.

Lori Nix – Museum of Art 2005

I can relate. I lived on a farm in my childhood, too, and my otherwise bucolic, slow-paced life was tempered by my father’s insistence that nuclear war was coming and we had better be prepared to survive. I have had dreams of ruined cities and abandoned landscapes my entire life; Nix’s work resonates with me very strongly. There is something evocative and eerie about an art museum not only abandoned (plague? radiation? war?) but home to giant colonies of honeybees.

More of Nix’s work can be seen on her website or her blog. She exhibits fairly regularly, and is currently exhibiting at Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto (Canada) until July 21 so you had better hustle down to Dundas Street between Beverly & McCaul if you want to catch the show – only one day left.