Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have been making art collaboratively for over nineteen years. Based in Cincinnati, they construct meticulously detailed model environments and photograph the results. We consider ourselves faux landscape photographers. We build meticulously detailed model environments, and then photograph the results. Through the photographic process the fictional scene is transformed into a surreal space, where scale, perspective, and the document of the photograph create a tension between the material reality of the scene and the impossibility of the depicted narrative. In this space, between evidence and plot, the imagination of the viewer is unlocked, engaged, and provoked. We want for our scenes to convey rich, complex, detailed, and, ultimately, open-ended narratives. 

Several common themes prevail throughout the work: the constructed photograph, the landscape in turmoil, and danger married to humor. We present these elements as the raw materials of stories with messages, but without conclusions. 

The photographs we create do not reflect the tradition of the grand idyllic landscape. Rather than showing the beautiful or heroic vista, we look to the darker corners of life. We are interested in the forces of entropy, in the ruins left in the wake of human portence of grandeur. Our scenes are usually devoid of people and this emptiness becomes an important element. In this way, what remains show the impact of civilization in the absence of humans. Evidence of humans may still be visible, but the cause for their absence is left unclear, allowing the viewer to complete the narrative.