Incredibly atmospheric photographs of otherworldly models from Dan Tobin Smith and Rachel Thomas

We’re well aware that after the festive break it is imperative to come back in style with something very special to whet your creative whistles for the year ahead, and my word have we got just the thing. Photographer Dan Tobin Smith and designer Rachel Thomas are opening a new show in London later this month which features beautiful, otherworldly photographs of polystyrene stage sets. From magical floating cities (photographed on an eight metre square lake of milk) to classical ruins there’s a delicate filmic quality and all sense of scale is subverted.

“We were looking to create forms that are instantly recognisable, but also uncanny and able to convey the seductiveness that only comes from something that’s not quite real,” Rachel says and their artistic aims are achieved thanks to the pair’s work with “arial perspective” whereby light is bounced off smoke particles in the air to create the epic, ethereal atmosphere.

And this sense of drama extends to their process according to Dan. “We love to refine images in camera, he says. "Light, exposure, perspective — all the elements come together in the studio, it is pretty intense. It’s an event”.

Imaginary View which also features the models used in the shoots runs at Somerset House from January 18 until February 9.