Nature begins to take back New York City after all the humans are gone in this series of artfully photographed post-apocalypse miniatures. A collaboration between artists Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, ‘Empire’ is the duo’s second series on this theme, the first focusing on interiors while the latest depicts exterior scenes. Living in New York provides all the inspiration the artists need, particularly subway rides between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and all of the architectural detail that can be appreciated if you just look up.

Nix is the architect of these tiny structures, while Gerber is the sculptor. The work is labor-intensive, with a single diorama taking anywhere from three to fifteen months to complete. They start each piece in their apartment, and then move to the outside studio when it’s close to being finished to set it up for documentation. The lighting and the tiny details are what give each one its realistic edge.

The materials used include basswood, extruded foam sheets, acrylic, polymer clay and epoxy. The most challenging aspect of the work is making those materials look like something else – for instance, turning a tiny piece of foam and wood into a leather and steel office chair.

“I don’t really have a death wish, it just seems that way,” says Nix. “For the last eight years my photographs have highlighted a fictional urban landscape ‘after’. An aquarium after a flood, a church after a fire, a beauty parlor after…who knows what. Mankind is gone and what remains are vacant fragments of buildings, a few slowly being reclaimed by nature.”

“‘The City’ imagines what New York City and Brooklyn would look like if suddenly mankind had disappeared. The exact cause for the desertion is left vague. Was it a natural disaster, a virus, global warming, war? A few images hint at the destructive history of the space – a library dome crushed by a tornado or a subway car filled with sand. To me, imagining something so globally catastrophic is both chilling and exciting. I often wonder about my own survival instincts when pondering an emptying city.”

Empire, on the other hand, “presents a world transformed by climate uncertainty and a shifting social order as it stumbles towards a new kind of frontier. These places are eerily beautiful but also unsettling in their stillness and silence. Long ago, man entered the landscape and forced nature to his will. Once grand and emblematic of strength and prosperity, these landscapes now appear abused and in decay, and it is uncertain how they will continue to (d)evolve.”

For every kid who ever took apart his family’s electronics just to see how they worked, David Trautrimas has concocted fantastical worlds full of upended, dismantled household appliances masquerading as apartment buildings and industrial factories. They’re a fascinating cross between steampunk and an alien post-apocalyptic world.

Habitat Machines

David Trautrimas is a Canadian artist whose ideas about architecture are bigger than zoning laws and the laws of physics will allow. Housing developments and apartment blocks feel bland to him, so he decided to create his own fantastical worlds. His digitally-assembled art features items which most of us will find very familiar.

Trautrimas’ pictures consist of actual photographs of everyday items. Waffle irons, oil cans, vacuums, space heaters – anything that interests him may be disassembled and photographed, then the pieces digitally reassembled to form an unexpected cityscape. The backgrounds are real, as well: he roams his home city, Toronto, looking for interesting settings to piece together with his disassembled household items.

The items which will become the dystopian buildings can be found just about anywhere: Trautrimas scours thrift shops and garage sales looking for treasures. He favors those that are older, with character-adding scratches and dents. He then takes them apart, photographing each piece against a neutral background. Once a building is ready to be erected, he uses the various bits and pieces along with an appropriate background (which is usually a composite of many background shots) to construct dwellings that would not be possible in our own urban environment.

Industrial Parkland

These artistic visions of buildings aren’t confined to apartment buildings. Trautrimas also applied his unique vision to commercial buildings in the 2007 series Industrial Parkland. The factories in this series are made in the same way as the Habitat Machines pieces, but they have a distinctly more industrial feel.

Even more than in the residential series, these factories are fashioned from retro-looking appliances that give the resulting buildings an oddly futuristic, vaguely Monty Python-esque, but wholly charming feel. Old lamps, fans, car parts and other office and industrial items are repurposed to create an industrial landscape that will never be seen anywhere but on Trautrimas’ prints.

It’s always interesting to see the secret lives of everyday items, and Trautrimas gives these items an amazing new life. His compositions are never cutesy or overly serious; rather, they are very matter-of-fact. While they are only a fantasy, it’s not so hard to imagine these factories whirring to life. We can’t wait to see an entire cityscape of Trautrimas’ retro-futuristic steampunk buildings.