These Miniature Worlds Are Two Centimeters Tall
Scottish photographer David Gilliver has spent years shrinking the world down to two centimeters, and it turns out that’s exactly the right size to see it clearly.
His ongoing Little People series places tiny figurines inside oversized everyday environments, and the results are equal parts funny and quietly profound. Broccoli becomes an old-growth forest.
A crumpled plastic bag turns into an iceberg. A melting scoop of ice cream reads like a slow-moving natural disaster, complete with a rescue crew.
The trick is scale, and Gilliver knows precisely how to play it. Shift the size of the observer and the most familiar object on your kitchen counter becomes strange, monumental, worth a second look.
There’s real skill under the whimsy too. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, Gilliver specializes in macro photography and long-exposure light painting, and the technical control shows in every frame.
We’ve long loved this corner of the art world.
Things we would keep ourselves
Every piece in our shop is chosen by the editors of Moss & Fog.
Pocket Terrarium, Self Sustaining Miniature Ecosystem
A sealed moss world under a cork lid, made by hand in New York.
$11
Rechargeable Flameless Candle Light
Nine inches of warm, flickering amber light, recharged by USB.
$34
Field Studies Vol. III: The Rare Ones (Set of Four Printable Art Prints)
The four rarest trees on Earth as letterpress prints, an instant download.
$6
Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka has been building a new miniature scene every single day since 2011, turning fried rice into surf breaks and clothespins into diving boards.
Slinkachu takes the opposite approach, abandoning his tiny characters on real city streets for strangers to discover. Gilliver sits somewhere between the two, more playful than Slinkachu, more pop-culture inclined than Tanaka, with a Scottish sense of humor running underneath it all.
Images © Copyright David Gilliver. Used with artist’s permission.
