To this day, I’m still enthralled by the idea of apocalypse.

Introduction

Before he made photographs, Louis Daguerre built dioramas. Indeed, he and his colleague Charles Marie Bouton are said to have invented the notion and the name. Unlike the panoramas popular at the time, the early diorama was painted on both sides of the canvas so that, as the lighting was changed front and back, the scene morphed from day to night or concord to calamity. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the term diorama came to refer to three-dimensional tableaux. Created life size or in miniature these displays became popular as museological depictions of far-off places and times. They were not, of course, the first examples of miniature model environments to be created. In 1859, Napoleon III built an elaborate model railway for his son, while doll’s houses go back at least as far as the eighteenth century. In their miniature form especially, dioramas capture the childhood imagination and reignite it in adults. There is a beguiling sense of wonder and suspension of disbelief when the eye is drawn into these tiny worlds. And a question: what if…?

Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber create miniature dioramas, conjuring in each that very sense of possibility. Early scenes played along the ticklish midriff of cute and disturbing, evoking a smile and a wince as a plane crashes into a Kansas homestead or God smites a revivalist tent with a well-aimed thunderbolt. But over the years, as the work has evolved, the scenes have become ever more elaborate: full of detail but empty of people. We leave the guilty thrill of the disaster movie to enter the world-building of speculative fiction: of what if…

The genius of these later works lies in the way they weave together three psychological threads. They are aesthetically accomplished. It is clear the artists have laboured long in their making and with great skill. The models demonstrate immense finesse. At the same time, their miniature scale remains evident. However dark the narrative that each image unfolds, we can be comforted that it remains, for now, in the realms of artifice. But an undertow lurks, drawing the sands of certainly from under our feet, hinting at our vulnerability, our transience. How easily we might be overwhelmed. For the phenomena depicted are not in the realms of fantasy, but political and scientific prognosis. Realities that, if we do not radically change direction, wait for us not so far down the road. Like Daguerre’s dioramas, these miniature worlds reveal the flip side that lies just behind the familiar. What if…

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

Lori, when did you begin making miniature dioramas?

Lori: Shortly after leaving graduate school. I have never been one to go out in search of a subject, I wanted to photograph what I was dreaming. I was living in an attic apartment with a very limited budget. I didn’t have money to travel, but just enough to buy a How To… book on constructing dioramas. I would sit at my worktable listening to the radio and become completely engrossed in my miniature worlds.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Plane’ 1998 from the series ‘Accidentally Kansas’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Tent Revival’ 1999 from the series ‘Accidentally Kansas’

In your first series ‘Accidently Kansas’ and ‘Some Other Place’ there is a sense of foreboding or impending disaster. What drew you to these darker themes?

Lori: I grew up surrounded by the wheat fields of western Kansas. It was a dynamic childhood. What made it exceptional for me were the powerful snowstorms, tornados, floods, fires, June bug swarms and grasshopper infestations. The dioramas recreate these experiences and, because these draw on childhood memories, some are embellished. I wanted to evoke the excitement of these phenomena – the wonder and awe I felt as a child, happy to leave the fretting to the adults.

I grew up in the 1970s, when dystopian cinema was at its height. ‘Planet of the Apes’, ‘Towering Inferno’, ‘Airport ‘76’, ‘Logan’s Run’… these movies had a profound impact on me. To this day, I’m still enthralled by the idea of apocalypse.

Kathleen, when did your creative collaboration with Lori begin?

Kathleen: It was around 2000. We’d moved to New York City together the year before and were both working day jobs in Manhattan. Lori was spending her evenings making her dioramas and I didn’t have anything specific to do. So, I asked if she could use some help. She said yes, and it grew from there. I had no previous experience model making but I appreciated the handcrafted nature of it.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Floater’ 2001 from the series ‘Some Other Place’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Anatomy Classroom’ 2012 from the series ‘The City’

How do you collaborate with each other?

Lori: First, I need to convince Kathleen about the next scene, get her excited about it. Once she’s on board, I start collecting reference materials. I see my role as architect and Kathleen as sculptor. I will build the walls, floors, windows, trim, and furniture for a scene. Kathleen will focus on the objects within that scene. Take for instance the ‘Anatomy Classroom’. I built the cabinets, cupboards, desks, and shelves, along with the walls and windows. Kathleen crafted the skulls and anatomical models, maps, and created the specimen jars and their contents.

Kathleen: We joke that Lori is the ‘big picture’ and I am ‘the details’. But that is pretty accurate. She is better at conceiving the overall concept of the project and handling the structural aspects. I gravitate more to the details within it. Like, let’s put some taller trees here to force the perspective, or let’s crumble this part of the building to expose something inside. It works well for us because we end up pushing and pulling each other to find a better, more dynamic solution to the work.

Lori: Basically, I’m interested in the technical aspects of creativity such as computer programs, laser cutters, 3-D printers… anything hard edged and math based. Kathleen revels in paint finishes, sculpting materials, and anything squishy.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Bounty’ 2004 from the series ‘Lost’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Junkyard’ 2003 from the series ‘Lost’

In ‘Lost’ the models become more complex and the narratives more enigmatic…

Lori: It was also a period in my life when I was feeling untethered, on the cusp of something about the change. It was time to leave landscapes behind and delve into architectural interiors and confined spaces.

Kathleen: I think we wanted to challenge ourselves, to make the scenes more detailed. Looking back at the work now, I can only think that experiencing 9/11 in New York City may have added to the general feeling of unease. I don’t think we had specific conversations about it at the time, but it makes sense to me in retrospect.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Mastodon’ 2009 from the series ‘Unnatural Histories’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘North American Beavers’ 2009 from the series ‘Unnatural Histories’

Most of your work is in colour, but ‘Unnatural Histories’ is in black and white. Why did you make that choice?

Lori: I read an interview with a prominent New York gallery owner who said, “black-and-white photography is dead”. I thought: well, if black-and-white photography is indeed dead, then I’m interested in it!

Kathleen: And we happened to have a bunch of out-of-date black-and-white film in the fridge. That was definitely part of it…

Lori: It was an opportunity to build quicker and more humorous scenes. We were in the middle of creating work for ‘The City’ and those dioramas were taking anywhere from three to fifteen months to build. We wanted to create these quick, fun scenes while also picking away at the ongoing colour work.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Dodo Birds’ 2009 from the series ‘Unnatural Histories’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Gallery of Important and Interesting Rocks’ 2010 from the series ‘Unnatural Histories’

What led you to the subject of natural history museums?

Lori: I absolutely love looking at how museum dioramas are created, especially the smaller ones. I wonder about the materials used, the forced perspectives, the craftsmanship… Dioramas take such a lot of money and time to create that it is not possible to keep creating new ones. Today’s museums are full of cheap graphics and interactive media devices, but dioramas are so much more engaging.

Kathleen: We tried to capture some of that craftsmanship while also gently undermining the idea that museums are the ‘experts’ on all things.

I particularly loved the ‘Gallery of Important and Unusual Rocks’.

Kathleen: Humour is very important to us. We do want to have fun while we work! Our idea was to suggest some ‘alternative versions’ of natural history – to question if what was presented was true – and we wanted to make you smile. Some are specifically goofy – the North American Beavers coming out of a crate marked Product of Mexico or the office weirdly full of dodos… And one of those ‘rocks’ is a peach pit that Lori dug out of a hill! I still give her grief about that. [laughter]

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Majestic’ 2006 from the series ‘The City’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Control Room’ 2010 from the series ‘The City’

In the series ‘The City’ you return to colour and the scenes depicted represent larger, more intricate urban spaces…

Lori: We’d been living in Brooklyn for six years and took our inspiration from our surroundings: the amazing architectural interiors (‘Majestic’), janky neighbourhood stores (‘Chinese Take-Out’), and sometimes unknowable, imagined spaces (‘Control Room’). I had spent my childhood exploring derelict farmhouses and tumble-down barns. I wanted to imagine what the city would look like if it was abandoned overnight. How would these spaces age without constant upkeep? What parts of our culture would wither and disappear?

Kathleen: There were several books and films speculating on what the world would look like if humankind was no longer around. That was intriguing. We were also becoming more technically proficient with the dioramas and wanted to push our skills still further. We added more detail to buildings, the surfaces. We created more elements from scratch.

Lori: As we built these dioramas, the design of the spaces would change but the themes remained constant. When we think of a narrative series, not only do we consider what kind of destruction has happened, we are also thinking about the colour temperature, the quality of light, where in the country these spaces might have existed.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Chinese Take-Out’ 2013 from the series ‘The City’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Laundromat’ 2008 from the series ‘The City’

What prompted this thematic evolution to the post-apocalyptic?

Kathleen: We wanted to show how we thought things might change as the result of something larger than a flood or a tornado. The notion of a failed society was in our minds. I don’t think we explicitly showed that, but it was still there for us. Yet, despite all the decay, we tried to have a little bit of ‘hope’ by including evidence of nature taking over. Increasingly, the idea of the resilience of nature entered the scenes.

What kind of materials are you using to render these miniature worlds?

Lori: We use a wide range of materials: basswood, polymer clay, plaster, styrene, paper pulp, feathers, googly eyes, modelling materials such as ground coloured foams and dyed sawdust, acrylic paints, casting resin, plexiglass…

How long does it take?

Lori: Anywhere from three to fifteen months to create a new diorama, but seven months is the typical amount of time.

Kathleen: Lori tends to come up with the overall concept for a series. We discuss it and she may have to do some convincing because, honestly, sometimes her ideas sound like a whole lot of work for me! But she has very good instincts about it all and, after some discussion, I make rough sketches. We then start to do a lot of online visual research, compile references. The sketches get refined and we divide up the tasks.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Library’ 2007 from the series ‘The City’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Observatory’ 2015 from the series ‘The City’

Kathleen: We tend to work on the various parts of a scene separately, but at the same time. At the end of the day, we’ll check in to see how the other is doing. For a long time, it seems like nothing is getting done because we are busy working to complete many individual elements. Then we bring those different elements together and, within a few days, we are suddenly almost done. That is a great day!

Lori: Once we think we’re almost done, I pull out the large format camera and begin adjusting the lights and diffusers. I shoot the scene over a period of days or even weeks, making small adjustments, adding more details as I photograph and rephotograph until we are happy with the end result.

When did you move from shooting on film to digital?

Lori: I started shooting digitally with ‘Empire’. Film was getting more and more expensive, and I wanted the greater freedom that digital offers. To capture these images, I would shoot the diorama in sections and then stitch them together in postproduction. I’m not the best at Photoshop, so I still approach lighting, colour temperature, and tone as if I am shooting film. I try to employ practical effects as much as possible.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Rift’ 2016 from the series ‘Empire’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Utopia’ 2017 from the series ‘Empire’

‘Empire’ is yet more ambitious in its construction and the title suggests the arc of geopolitical power and historical time. What are you exploring in this work?

Kathleen: In 2016, the US was on the brink of an important election. A lot of fundamental ideas seemed at stake. Throughout the whole world, big shifts were underway. It was scary. What if we were witnessing a major geopolitical shift? What if the US as we knew it was on the decline? It lay heavily on our minds.

‘Arch’ was a direct response to these ideas. There are many triumphal arches around the world. Each constructed when that society was strong and flourishing. Inevitably, the political tides changed, new empires arose to become leaders. And now those arches are just relics of the past.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Arch’ 2015 from the series ‘Empire’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Dawn’ 2016 from the series ‘Empire’

You have said that your motto is: work harder not smarter. An interesting inversion of the contemporary cliché. What do you mean by this?

Lori: We have been slow to embrace new technologies in the studio. It has changed the way we work. But instead of the work becoming easier, it’s just different. The workload hasn’t got any lighter.

Kathleen: Ha! Sometimes it feels like we’ve picked a pretty hard way to make a living. It’s a lot of picky, tedious work that seems to have no end. It can be physically taxing, and yet often the only answer is to work on it more hours. That said, I do think as we get more technically proficient, we are finding more efficient ways of working.

What happens to the models once you have photographed them?

Lori: We dismantle them and recycle as much as possible; the rest is broken up and put in the dumpster. People express grief that we do not keep these dioramas intact. But the photograph is the final artwork, not the model, which is only finished on the side that faces the camera. And they would simply take up too much precious studio space.

[Left] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Overpass’ 2017 from the series ‘Empire’
[Right] © Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber ‘Sentinel’ 2017 from the series ‘Empire’

In making this work over the years, what have you learned about yourself that you did not previously know or understand?

Kathleen: I really do prefer working as part of a team. I like the collaboration that comes from working on common goals. Even while I was in an office job, my favourite part was helping our clients get the right materials and connecting them with talented collaborators.

Money is not my strongest motivation. It’s more important that I’m doing something interesting or creative. And I like working with my hands – it energises me.

Lori: I wouldn’t be able to build these scenes without Kathleen, and we are good at pushing each other. And I enjoy working collaboratively with someone I trust whose skills complement mine. I am driven to learn new techniques, because I’m forever trying to craft the most realistic scenes possible. It is this problem solving that keeps me interested in dioramas.

Kathleen says I am patient when it comes to developing ideas but extremely impatient when it comes to executing them. I am just not interested in the singular image. I work thematically. I want to explore an idea through variations on the theme. If I cannot stretch this idea through seven or more images, I will not pursue it.

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Their photographs are held in many prestigious public and private collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas; El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany. Publications include five monographs: ‘Lori Nix: Waiting to Happen’ (Contact Sheet 119 by Light Work 2002), ‘Another World’ (Lyndaia for Pace Contemporary 2013), ‘The City’ (Decode Books 2013), ‘The Power of Nature’ (Wienand Verlag 2015), and ‘Unnatural History’ (Peanut Press 2021). Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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