‘Coming to life’ through crafting miniature dioramas of home

In 1823, Daguerre and Bouton brought their invention to the UK – the diorama. Huge, back-lit canvases appeared to come ‘alive’ and offer audiences ‘through-views’ of the world. Here, I present ethnographic data on how contemporary dioramas at the other end of the scale – the miniature – are made, and how this affords makers ‘through-views’ of life. I describe how three UK-based practitioners create scaled-down three-dimensional dioramas of home. According to them, the diorama is a genre of miniaturisation that best enables them to narrativise scenes of life emplaced in the home: places where interiority, exteriority, space and time intertwine in complex ways that practitioners deem fundamental to life-making. Life's intricacy is best captured at small scale, they suggest, as shrinking requires retaining and incorporating the macro into the micro. I argue miniaturists form dioramas of the home not only because they come to life for audiences but because this particular process of form-giving also transforms makers themselves – offering bodily catharsis, repair and therapy as they too, come to life. to life.