Gareth first wrote to us (that is, your editors, Jim DeRogatis and Barry Biediger) after enjoying our Small Subjects podcast, and while he is still gearing up to try his hand at his first box diorama, he is a big fan of the form, sending along articles on vintage boxes we hadn’t seen yet, and sharing his own work, which, as he says, is “box-adjacent.” But let’s let him tell the story; he writes:

“Once again, I am loving the podcast and am really enjoying the subject matter and interview subjects that you choose to cover. I’ve long thought about building a box, and my photography is box-adjacent, so it feels like the next natural step for me. I work at a garbage dump, so as you might imagine, finding building material is not a challenge and the figures will not be overly complex when it comes to sculpting. Meanwhile, I’ve kind of drifted into a bit of an odd modeling rabbit hole: I’m not strictly speaking a boxed dioramist. I treat what I do more like film-set construction, in that I tear everything down after I’ve photographed it. Everything is 1/35th scale. Many of the figures are modified from German infantry figures, while the two Kung Fu figures in ‘Last Kick at the Can’ were sculpted at I think around 1/32nd or so. I feel like for my film-noir material that I’ve been forced to make actual style decisions, while making convincing indoor scenes for dioramas.” 

Break-In, 2023

La Commedia, 2023

St. Vincent, 2023

A Man and His Dog

Coin Operated

Discovery

First Shot

Ironing

Last Kick at the Can

Orb

Second Shot

Shadow Play

The Day the Spiders Came

Threading the Needle