Lori Nix: The City
"Lori Nix's retelling of urban history through her tableaux of the city after humans no longer exist is fantastical, creepy, and dreamlike" - photographer Jade Doskow (Meg Ryan HeeryAmerican Photo2014-01-01)" I grew up with the ethic, 'Work hard and hopefully something good comes of it,' " says Nix, a photojournalist turned-artist whose very good, often post-apocalyptic dioramas are built by hand, taking seven months each to complete. The work is bleak in content but not in character: Destroyed bar stools lie alongside brightly colored, long-disused pinball machines; the head of a stone lion is surrounded by lush foliage; and a bleak, blue-red sky echoes more Rothko than Gernica. She may be obsessed with the apocalypse, but Nix retains an artist's eye for color. (OUT2013-12-01)The City is artist Lori Nix's first monograph. Limited to 1,200 copies and published by Decode Books, it's 76 pages with 37 reproductions of Nix's photographs made since 2005. The cover image, Library, is stunning and tells you everything you need to know about the rest of the images contained within. The titular library is in the midst of prolonged decay; three trees, possibly aspens, are growing up from the ground, fed natural light and presumably water, through a gaping hole in the roof of the structure. The decay of the library itself is in various stages: some of the art on the wall isn't holding up too well, and the walls themselves are discoloring. Dust covers everything, and library chairs are scattered as if they were hastily abandoned before the unknown cataclysm that precipitated the abandonment, and thus decay, of the place. (David Ondrikphoto-eye BLOG2013-08-26)