Sculpture-Based Photography

About

Some photographers make their subject before pointing the camera at it. Building scenes for the lens goes back to 19th-century studio tableaux, but it became a distinct practice from the late 1970s. James Casebere photographed tabletop models of rooms, prisons and flooded arcades made from plaster and card, lit so they read as real architecture. David Levinthal staged toy soldiers and figurines, and Laurie Simmons photographed dolls in dollhouse interiors.

Thomas Demand rebuilds, at life size in coloured paper and card, places he knows from press photographs, such as offices and control rooms, then photographs and destroys the models. Sandy Skoglund fills whole rooms with sculpted creatures, as in Radioactive Cats (1980). Look for the giveaways: surfaces too smooth, no dirt or legible text, and scale clues that slip on a second look.