Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger normally produce beautiful commercial photos, but their hobby is recreating iconic photos — the Hindenberg’s explosion, Nessie 1934, Tiananmen 1989, 9/11, and more — in miniature, so that their replicas are virtually indistinguishable from the originals.
It’s a funny kind of design fiction. It asks, what if all these real things were hoaxes?
Cortis and Sonderegger call the series Iconen because the images are instantly recognizable to photographers and casual viewers alike. Most of them possess a solemn reverence, though some have an undeniable sense of whimsy or awe, like the Loch Ness monster or Buzz Aldrin’s footstep in moon dust. Their final images always pull back from the scene to provide a glimpse of the studio and the materials used: a roll of tape here, a glue gun there. They want viewers to know they’re having fun.g
History’s Most Iconic Photos, Recreated in Miniature [Zachary Slobig/Wired]
(via Bruce Sterling)