Haunting and realistic images of a post-apocalyptic world

A dilapidated subway car full of sand, an abandoned shopping mall overgrown with trees, a tattered library covered in debris - these are scenes that a photographer would normally have to leave their house to go out and find. But photographer Lori Nix is an exception. A homebody since she was a child, Nix found a way to photograph imaginative, and sometimes dismal scenes from the comfort of her own home.

Nix and her partner, Kathleen Gerber, make extremly realistic mini-dioramas - and their recent collaboration, "The City," takes the viewer into a dark, post-apocalyptic world.

"Rather than go out into the world in search of these scenes, I choose to stay in my apartment and build my own worlds," Nix told Business Insider. Ahead, see more of the surreal mini-dioramas made by Nix and Gerber.