Diorama: Miniature Apocalypse

Lori Nix's Stunning, Tiny Dioramas Depict an Abandoned World. For some reason, human beings can't get enough of imagining our own destruction. From REM and Roland Emmerich to National Geographic and NASA, the apocalypse never goes out of style. Now fine-art photographer Lori Nix is adding her eerie vision to the mix with an exhibition called "The City"

The twist is that Nix's photos aren't Photoshop manipulations -- they're real images of tiny, painstakingly detailed dioramas that Nix has designed just for these photographs. She built the 3-D scenes in her living room on nights and weekends with the help of an assistant, with each one taking anywhere from two to fifteen months to complete. Nix then shot the dioramas on normal 8x10 film, making her minuscule creations -- about 20 x 24 x 72 inches small -- appear nearly indistinguishable from full-size scenes.

Check out the article and photo gallery at FastCoDesign