Randy Hage has been visiting New York twice a year since the late 90s, but he is not attracted by the city’s iconic buildings and tourist attractions found on maps and guide books. Rather, the Los Angles born artist has been drawn to the city’s “mom and pop” shops and their hand painted signs and weathered patinas that have become an integral part of the native New York community. Hage began photographing them, but before long it became apparent that many of these shop were going out of business and replaced by swanky restaurants and chain stores.

Randy Hage, who builds models and props for movies and television, decided to use his skills as a set designer to immortalize these disappearing stores. Hage started making painstakingly detailed scale models of the storefronts he photographed. “It became a way of documenting the processes of gentrification and urban renewal,” he said.

A 1:12 scale model of a store front built by Randy Hage.