The City by Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, created between 2005 and 2013, presents a vision of post-apocalyptic urban interiors through meticulously crafted dioramas photographed in their Brooklyn studio. Over more than two decades of collaboration, Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have developed complementary roles within their shared practice. Nix, trained in photography, serves as both the architect and photographer—conceiving scenes, constructing structural elements, lighting the sets, and capturing the final image. Gerber, with a background in glass sculpture, contributes as the detail artist, crafting props, adding surface finishes, and aging materials to suggest abandonment. Their process involves joint planning, mock-ups, and revisions, with each image requiring months of meticulous work.
The City renders contemporary anxieties—ecological, societal, and dystopian—through decaying miniature urban interiors, reflecting on the limits of human achievement and the persistent capacity of natural forces to reclaim built environments. Spaces central to knowledge, leisure, and consumer culture are rendered in states of neglect, overrun by plant life and strewn with remnants of past lives. The absence of human figures emphasizes loss while inviting the viewer to imaginatively inhabit the ruins.
Visually, the photographs offer hyper-detailed, color-rich images of fabricated spaces viewed from a single perspective. Each diorama is handcrafted from materials like foam, plaster, and cardboard. The artists control lighting and perspective with cinematic precision, creating scenes bathed in moody, often dramatic light. The realism is tempered by signs of artifice, such as exaggerated scale or painterly textures, which balance narrative illusion with material awareness.
Technically speaking, the project was photographed using an 8x10 large-format film camera. Digital manipulation is limited strictly to image stitching for large prints; instead, the artists rely on traditional photographic methods and practical effects, such as fog machines, to achieve their desired atmosphere. This commitment to analog processes highlights the physical craftsmanship of their miniature sets and distinguishes their approach apart from more digitally driven practices.
Exhibited widely—from ClampArt, New York, and Catherine Edelman Gallery to museum shows in Germany and Kansas—the series gained broader attention with the 2013 monograph and entered collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Lori Nix’s 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship further affirmed the project’s significance.
