Small is Beautiful: Lori Nix

Unlike most photographers who shoot a passing moment, Brooklyn-based photographer Lori Nix constructs hers through labor-intensive miniature dioramas of impending disasters: a plane about to fall from the sky, a swarm of insects descending onto a field of wheat. Shot tight to the subjects, these photos distort the scale of the subjects by enlarging small things to fill the frame, making them appear larger than life and ominous.

Theme sits down with Nix to discuss how growing up in Kansas informed her love of disasters, and how she fell into photographing dioramas by a process of elimination.

You have said in previous interviews that you were drawn to photographing constructed models in part by growing up in Kansas…what are some of your memories of Kansas and how did that result in some of your pieces?
I grew up in rural Western Kansas in a small town of 3500 (now it’s 3100) and every season we were greeted with a new disaster of some sort, major blizzards, insect infestations (grasshoppers, june bugs, weird grubworms), floods, tornadoes, lots of hail. A lot of this sounds traumatic and it is, but as a young kid it was fantastic, it was exciting! Every season brought some new excitement to entertain us neighborhood kids. My first series of work, Accidentally Kansas is a reflection of these experiences.

So you’re attracted to disaster.
Yeah, I guess I’m fascinated by controlling the retelling of these disasters.

What brought you to start constructing models as your photo subjects?
I’ve always worked with constructed photography, even in undergrad I wasn’t doing traditional photography. I kind of came to photographing models because of how bad I am at other forms of photography: I take horrible portraits; I wasn’t a very good photo journalist because I don’t keep up with the news; and I was never a street shooter because I was never aware of my surroundings – I’m always looking at the sidewalk trying not to step on something. But what I do like is — an dI come from a ceramics background – I like working with my hands so therefore, I’m only good at creating environments and photographing those. If you ask me to come and photograph your wedding it would be the worst wedding pictures you’ve ever seen.

Do you consider the photograph the work of art or the models?
The photographs have been the final product. I don’t do any digital manipulation to my photographs so I build the model, put the camera in front of it, and I photograph it.

What do you do with the models after you’re done photographing it?
New York apartments being what they are, I end up throwing them away. Space is a premium here.

The Small is Beautiful project is different for you then since we’re asking you to focus on the model as the piece of art.
It was challenging, because I’m used to building a model from one vantage point, and here I’m having to make the model in the round and I’m constantly keeping in mind that there’s a 360 view of the piece.

For your piece, you were inspired by to architects of the 1940s envisioning the future.
I’ve made a futuristic city that didn’t quite live up to it’s future. So the city is going to be a little old, a little tired, a little down trodden. I’m really obsessed with dystopia. And there’s going to be this little car in the middle, the car to me represents freedom, it represents a new lifestyle, a new potential.

Model making is very much an architect’s craft, and you seem to have a fascination for buildings, did you have any aspirations to be an architect?
My latest body of work is The City, and as I work on this, I’m getting more and more interested in architecture. I’ve been looking at architecture books so I can reference the styles as I build my models, but I’m not a trained model maker in any sense, so I’m really guessing at what should be done. These buildings do not look perfect by any means.

That’s the charm of it.
Oh, let’s hope.

Can you elaborate on your comment that “Small is Beautiful” is fun?
Anything that is small is considered cute to begin with, right? With the new small Scion IQ coming out, I was running with the idea of fun, I wish I could have one. My city is old and decrepit and dark, and the car represents pockets of light and fun.

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Theme has teamed up with Scion to curate an exhibition of miniature dioramas by artists Jeremy Mora, Lori Nix, Tracey Snelling, Dan Funderburgh and Ji Lee. Asked to interpret the theme “Small is Beautiful” the five artists constructed mini cities, colored and inspired by their own experiences of urban life, touching on topics of decay, regeneration, voyeurism, multiculturalism, chaos and order.