I collect miniature train houses. I see these houses as artifacts of male leisure and pose as the architectural vernacular of train hobby time, and the reproduction of our everyday matter in miniature. With big fingers, the builders cut and paste paper patterns for curtains and interior wallpaper, and glue together walls as though they were building a doll house, but one that is not to play with or fill in with extras like furniture or dolls.
Rather nostalgic, and built to support the hobbyist's idea of the way the world should be, if you zoom in you see the thinness of the image, with glue blobs and off-center decals. These buildings are "quick fix architecture" to plunk into a bigger landscape where a train runs by and through a frozen world.
Secondly, I photograph them under a separate subject of Simulation, and find them to be eery in their emptiness, as though the world has been forgotten and left behind. The camera picks up the tension between mistakes and the attempt to copy well, which makes them closer to reality than intended.
Rather nostalgic, and built to support the hobbyist's idea of the way the world should be, if you zoom in you see the thinness of the image, with glue blobs and off-center decals. These buildings are "quick fix architecture" to plunk into a bigger landscape where a train runs by and through a frozen world.
Secondly, I photograph them under a separate subject of Simulation, and find them to be eery in their emptiness, as though the world has been forgotten and left behind. The camera picks up the tension between mistakes and the attempt to copy well, which makes them closer to reality than intended.
all photographs: Cynthia Hathaway, 2012
