Lori Nix
Lori Nix is a photographer and printer based in Brooklyn, NY who has been building dioramas and then photographing them since the early 1990s, and whose work has been widely collected and exhibited internationally.
Biography
Lori Nix was born in Norton, Kansas, in 1969, and graduated from Truman State University where she studied ceramics, and photography. She went on to study photography at the graduate level at Ohio University, and moved to New York in 1999.[1]
Process
Nix considers herself a “faux landscape photographer,”[2] and her work is influenced by extreme weather and disaster films.[3] She works without digital manipulation, using miniatures and models to create surreal scenes and landscapes, building dioramas that range from 20 inches to six feet in diameter. They take several months to build, and two to three weeks to photograph, using a large format 8 × 10 film camera.[4][5] Nix works with her partner Kathleen Gerber, a trained glass artist, at home in Brooklyn, NY, constructing most of the scenery by hand from scratch, using "foam and glue and paint and anything else handy." After the final photograph is made, Nix harvests the diorama for pieces for future use and then destroys it.[6][7][8] Nix and Gerber also design and fabricate sets for video.[9]
Major Projects
- Photography
The City, 2005–2013. A post-apocalyptic vision wherein Nix explores what it would be like to be one of the last remaining people living in a city, imagining indoor urban scenes.[10]
Unnatural History, 2009. A series of tiny dioramas of rooms in imaginary museums, partly inspired by New York's American Museum of Natural History.[11][12]
Lost, 2003–2004. Nix "subverts the traditions of landscape photography in order to create her own humorously dark world," examining feelings of isolation and loneliness.[13][14]
Some Other Place, 2000–2002. Made after Nix moved to New York in 1999, featured neighborhood sidewalks, city parks, and forays into the wilderness.[15][16]
Accidentally Kansas, 1998–2000. Tornadoes, floods, insect infestations, and other bizarre events that featured during her childhood in the American Midwest.[17]
- Video
A City Severed, 2012. A short film that recreates the 1863 New York City draft riots in miniature, produced with Four Story Treehouse.
The Story of Sushi, 2012. A short film about sustainable sushi in miniature, produced with Four Story Treehouse.
Books
Lori Nix: The City With an essay by Barbara Pollack. Published by Decode Books, August, 2013
Small Dangers. Miniature Disasters and Mayhem Published by Blurb Books, 2010
Contact Sheet 119 Lori Nix: Waiting to Happen, Light Work Published by Light Work, December, 2002
Contact Sheet 117: The Light Work Annual Published by Light Work, 2002
Gallery Representation
Nix is represented by:
- ClampArt, New York City
- Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
- G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, Washington
- Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto, Canada
- Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
- Paci Contemporary, Brescia, Italy
Select Solo Exhibitions
2014
- "The City," Galerie Klüser
2013
- "The City," G. Gibson Gallery
- "More Photographs From The City," ClampArt
- "Unnatural History," Drexel University's Art of Science Gallery
2012
- "The City," Bau-Xi Gallery
- "The City," Museum of Art, University of Maine, Bangor, Maine
- "The City," Hamilton Gallery, Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island
2011
- "Unnatural History" and "The City," CEPA Gallery, Rochester, New York
- "The City," Catherine Edelman Gallery
- "The City," Flippo Gallery, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia
2010
- "The City," ClampArt
Collections
Nix's photographs are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas; among others.[18][19]
Awards
Nix received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 in the US & Canada Competition for Creative Arts - Photography.[20] She received New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Grants in 2010 and 2004.
Notable editorial coverage & interviews
- "Behind TIME’s Smart Home Cover: Meet Artist Lori Nix" TIME Lightbox
- "Photographer Creates Post-Apocalyptic Urban Landscapes" ABC News
- "A peek 'Inside The Artists' Studio' at the Bruce Museum" Connecticut Post
- "Handmade Entropy," New Yorker Photo Booth
- "Apocalypse wow: Incredible models which give an eerie insight into a devastated world," Daily Mail
- "Lori Nix's Jaw-Dropping Photos of Post-Apocalyptic Dioramas," Details Magazine
- "Lori Nix's City," Rangefinder Magazine
- "Lori Nix's 'The City': Dioramas Of Disaster," Huffington Post
- "Lori Nix's Apocalypse Dioramas End The World In Stunning Style," Huffington Post, Canada Huffington Post, Canada
- "These Tiny Dioramas Have Seen Some Big Disasters," Slate
- "The Stunning Surreal World of Photographer Lori Nix," HomeDSGN
- "Conjuring the Apocalypse on Tabletop: Lori Nix Talks Dioramas," Digital Photography
- "Books as Muses," The New Yorker
- "The World Reimagined," Print Mag
- "The Cities That Lori Nix Builds," Lomography
- "Lori Nix," Saint Lucy
- "PhotoTalk with Lori Nix," Professional Women Photographers
- "Lori Nix," Cool Hunting
- "Academy of Natural Sciences puts itself on exhibit through dioramas," Newsworks
More
References
- ^ Saint Lucy
- ^ Photo Tech Magazine
- ^ Saint Lucy
- ^ Huffington Post
- ^ F-Stoppers
- ^ Digital Photography
- ^ HomeDSGN
- ^ Fast Co Design
- ^ Four Story Treehouse
- ^ ClampArt
- ^ ClampArt
- ^ In Liquid
- ^ ClampArt
- ^ Luminous Lint
- ^ ClampArt
- ^ California Museum of Photography
- ^ ClampArt
- ^ Decode Books
- ^ Edelman Gallery
- ^ Guggenheim Foundation]
- ^ Lori Nix personal website
- ^ Lori Nix personal blog