French artist Didier Massard creates eye-deceiving miniature dioramas depicting surreal, mystical landscapes. From a first glance, these sets remind of extremely detailed, hyper-realistic paintings or digitally rendered images. The striking effect unfolds after closer examination, when the viewer is exposed to careful layering and thoughtful light arrangements.
Massard explains his inspiration comes from real and imagined places. The limits of real life infuses his imagination to create mythological and romantic scenarios, which he then calls "the completion of an inner imaginary journey". China, India, the cliffs of Normandy and many other locations have been depicted in Didier's works.
Artist spends months constructing his miniature worlds, thus the collection is only slowly growing in size. Massard started his career as a commercial photographer for fashion and cosmetic companies like Chanel, Hermes and others. After his first series of dioramas, titled "Imaginary Journeys", his work was acknowledged and now Didier works exclusively on his personal projects. His work is currently on display at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles until August 23.
West Virginia: Bobby has five minutes left on his shift in the coal mine. Just enough time to dig a little deeper.
Washington: We can only close our eyes using clothespins.
Texas: Rounding up little doggies who have lost their way.
Maryland: Today the crabs decided to have a picnic of their own.
Canadian Photographer Jeff Friesen uses the iconic Legos to build dioramas that he later photographs. In the series 50 States of Legos, Friesen satirizes each state in the United States using the toy's characters, blocks, and accessories. Scenes are set against colorful backdrops like mountains, beaches, and grassy lands. Some include aliens, cowboys,and even historic figures like George Washington.
Henry Ford's Digital Collections Initiatives Manager Ellice Engdahl recently wrote about one of his favorite artifacts of the 18,000 published online: The Monkey Bar diorama. This diorama was created by a man known as Patrick J. Culhane (various spellings) in 1914-15 during his time at the Massachusetts State Prison at Charlestown where he'd been sent after a conviction of "larceny from a conveyance." Culhane carved and assembled this incredibly detailed piece of prison art by hand from a variety of materials, including peach pits, and scraps of wood, fabric, metal, cellulose, and plastic, all fitting into a base measuring only 16″ x 20″.
Engdahl surmises that Ford became interested in Culhane, and may have a hand in his release from prison, as Culhane was hired to work at the Ford Motor Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1916 and Ford's secretary corresponded with Culhane regularly.
Jack and Dinos Chapman's latest installation is currently on view in Hong Kong. The work is comprised of four dioramas depicting historical events with miniature figures. Violence, holocaust, and death pervade the work, as well as commercial images of characters from McDonald's. This creates a landscape rife with gritty humor and heavy irony. This work evokes a level of discomfort that is shockingly arresting. Jake says, "It's as pessimistic as we can make it but it's pessimistic in a joyful sense. Fatalistic in a joyful sense. There's nothing foreboding about this. It doesn't serve any kind of moral end…We take McDonald's as being a marker of the transformation from industrialisation to the end of the world. McDonald's once represented the idealism of fast food and the space rest era. Now it's consistent with the dilation of the ozone and a litigious clown who's lost his sense of humour.'" Check out other posts we've done about these artist brothers here.
These aren't photos of bisected buildings. Rather, they're the carefully constructed dioramas of artist Marc Giai-Miniet. His little libraries inhabit multi-storied buildings, perfectly suitable for us bookish nerds. However, many of his pieces almost seem to be hiding something sinister. The floors become darker, dirtier, more utilitarian the deeper they are in the building. Soot stained boiler rooms occupy the basement floors along with objects long forgotten. Perhaps the entire structure is a metaphor for the mind in a way: the diligent ego among the book lined floors and the unconscious hidden down in the dingy cellar.