Artist Satoshi Araki works in hyper-realistic dioramas, shocking in their extreme miniature scale and in how indistinguishable they are from the real thing. Urban landscapes, nearly post-apocalyptic in their feeling of emptiness and their state of decay, are his stock in trade, yet for all their blight, they manage to be remarkably lovely. Everything is dirty and rusted and crumbling, but in the most picturesque ways. A finger often appears in his dioramas’ photographs which shocks the viewer into realizing the extreme scale of the scenes.

“Diorama production diary of daily modeler omnivorous spell.” – Title on Araki’s splash page, offering further proof that Google really does need to work on its translation engine.

It took me a while to figure out why the pictures were making me so uncomfortable, but I finally figured out they were reminding me of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I’ll get over it. Anyway, they really are wonderful pictures.