A Hungarian artist uses miniature figurines to playfully mock up everyday life using tiny household items and photograph them.
Péter Csákvári spent two years working on ‘Tiny Wasteland’ – where the miniature figurines appear alongside household items from brushes to pineapples, creating unusual and compelling and often humorous scenes.
The 29-year-old came up with the concept while working as a chef and food photographer on the Channel Islands.
Blue(berry) collar workers: An artist has created the illusion of a microscopic world by placing tiny figurines alongside everyday objects to produce surreal scenes. Péter Csákvári spent two years working on ‘Tiny Wasteland’ – where miniature figurines appear alongside household items from brushes to pineapples, creating unusual and compelling scenes
One scene shows farm workers with toothpick-sized scythes on top of a scrubbing brush, cutting down the bristles as if they were bushels of wheat. The carefully created scenes take hours of work to prepare, place and shoot
Crime Sink Investigation: A playful shot shows three foren-sink detectives appearing to analyse a bloody murder scene. A few painted matchsticks, a splash red food colouring and a few some lights beneath the plughole creates the fun setting
Prawn sand-wedge: A golfer tees off of top of a crustacean for a simple, vibrant and playful shot showing just how small the figurines are
A head of cauliflower and a few miniature sheep alongside a shepherd and his dog create this tongue in cheek play on a highland farmer
Feeling hot, hot, hot: Using baby chilies and a straightened paper clip to look like a hose, the photograph depicts firefighters coming to the scene of a blaze
One image depicts the romantic scene of a man taking a woman rowing – in a washing-up bowl surrounded by plates, cutlery and soap suds
Péter, from Hungary, said: ‘I started my food photographer career there, but I didn’t have much work, so I combined the food photography with these little figures.
‘I found a miniature worker set in a model shop in Guernsey. I put them together with some blueberries, and that was the first picture.’
One playful scene shows farm workers with toothpick-sized scythes on top of a scrubbing brush, cutting down the bristles as if they were bushels of wheat.
Fish splash: A tin of sardines makes for a hilarious take on an outdoor pool with various figurines pictures diving into or swimming in the water
Using modern technology to highlight the fragility of life, a coffin is lowered into a keyboard when they delete key usually rests
Another image depicts the romantic scene of a man taking a woman rowing – in a washing-up bowl.
In a third, construction workers in hard hats can be seen scaling the sides of a pineapple.
Péter said he gets the figures from train model companies, but spends weeks carefully constructing each diorama and setting up the lighting before taking the photographs.
Some of the scenes take on a slightly sinister mood.
One picture shows a tiny chef presenting equally diminutive – and disgusted – diners with a giant house fly.
‘I want to create situations that we have never seen before,’ said Péter. ‘They are black mirrors.’
A building site with pick-axe wielding workers breaking open pumpkin seeds, scale of the figurines comes into perspective
A hunter and a chef stalk venison amid a scene of push pins and led lights
The Budapest-based artist, whose work has already appeared in the Sony World Photography Awards at Somerset House in London, says his strange creations have been well received.
He said: ‘Everyone who has seen them already loves them.
‘They’ve been around the world. One morning I saw my pictures on a Mexican morning TV show, and on the same day my pictures appeared in a magazine in Cuba.’