Eric Hod

A Man Spent Years Taking Photos Of One Small Town. When You Look Closer, You’ll See Why.

Artist and photographer Michael Paul Smith has spent hours upon hours photographing one special town that he holds very dear to his heart. There is something that always drew him to it, and the images he created are simple, but stunning. They glow with small-town charm and innocence, reminiscent of days and decades past.

The town he photographs is quaint and beautiful.

It’s like each picture tells a story of how life used to be in the United States.

There’s not much going on in these pictures,

but it’s obvious that this town is nothing but charm.

But, as it turns out, also not real.

Michael builds custom miniature models and sets, meticulously crafting every detail.

Then, the 60 year-old photographer creates the hyper-realistic images.

If you didn’t know any better, you might think these are

vintage photos of a town from a few decades ago…

And NOT the extremely small models this man built.

He started building these models as an exercise.

He wanted to practice his craft and also photography.

He never imagined it would be a “dream-like reconstruction” of the town he grew up in.

To Michael, this is what quintessential America looked like when he was a kid.

He creates the scenes by setting up Danbury Mint and

Franklin Mint die cast autos and trucks in front of his models on card tables.

Then, he uses the surrounding scenery to make the backgrounds for the photos.

The perspective has to be JUST right…

Usually the resulting photos are completely convincing.

Even when you know what’s going on behind the scenes.

It’s all an illusion.

But Michael is able to make an incredibly convincing one.

If you’d like to see more pictures of this perfect American town, visit the Elgin Park website. To learn more about Michael’s work, please visit the Craftsmanship Museum website for a full writeup on his talents and process.

Michael’s work is a reminder of how things used to be (and how we may remember them).

Source: Amusing Planet

Art has not always been what we think it is today.
An object regarded as Art today may not have been perceived as such when it was first made, nor was the person who made it necessarily regarded as an artist. Both the notion of "art" and the idea of the "artist" are relatively modern terms. The Visual Arts aren't only the paintings and sculptures we see in museums and galleries, they are also found in our everyday surroundings

Amazing Graffiti artwork by MTO - Rennes, France

     Many of the objects we identify as art today - Greek painted pottery, medieval manuscript illuminations, and so on - were made in times and places when people had no concept of "art" as we understand the term.
These objects may have been appreciated in various ways and often admired, but not as "art" in the current sense.
The idea of an object being a "work of art" emerges, together with the concept of the Artist, in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy.

     During the Renaissance, the word Art emerges as a collective term encompassing Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, a grouping given currency by the Italian artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century. Subsequently, this grouping was expanded to include Music and Poetry which became known in the 18th century as
the 'Fine Arts'. These five Arts have formed an irreducible nucleus from which have been generally excluded the 'decorative arts' and 'crafts', such as as pottery, weaving, metalworking, and furniture making, all of which have
utility as an end.

   According to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." and the art historian Thomas McEvilley agrees that today "more or less anything can be designated as art."