London’s doll landscapes that speak to the inner child in all of us

Today is the last day of the Miniaturesque exhibition in London and I, for one, am sorry not to have been able to see it. It is the culmination of an unusual project that’s been in process for nine years. The artist, Slinkachu, creates and photographs miniatures in cities around the world – placing small figures amid leaves, weeds and moss, making doll landscapes that speak to the inner child in all of us.

Or else, as Slinkachu says, viewers have an “empathetic response” to the figures in his scenes and this is tied to the human instinct to nurture small infants.

At the start of the ‘Little People Project’, as it was called in 2006, he says he also wanted “to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings” and his tiny figures are also meant to “reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed.”

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac