The Panoramic Diorama

Whilst browsing through an avant garde high gloss large format international architectural journal, as I occasionally like to do when trying appear sophisticated and high brow on the underground, I actually caught sight of something that completely captivated me. A sudden romantic sense of bohemian reverie arose in me as I gazed into a double page spread depicting a beautifully aged artist’s studio. My eye was immediately drawn into excitedly inspecting the studio’s melancholic sediment, slowly accumulated from years of intense work and habitation of a pensive and prolific painter. I turned the page and again hungrily devoured the visual feast of the next double page spread, this time gorging myself on what I thought to be the artist’s bathroom, gently weathered by moss, house plants and the placid daily routine of a creative soul. I flip backwards to the beginning of the article, intrigued to find out whose house I was peering into. Ronan Jim Sevellec was the artist, there was an image of him standing next to some paint brushes, somewhere I presumed to be in the house I was just looking at. I begin to read the article and to my surprise quickly discover that the romantic panoramic images I had just been studying were in fact photographs of intricate display model dioramas not much bigger than a shoe box! Intriguing and poetic the miniature worlds of Ronan Jim Sevellec demonstrate the wonders of making spaces by making places, coloured by the idiosyncratic movements of an individual, who in this case actually resides in the mind of the artist.