If you’re thinking that LEGO is still just for kids, you may want to check out the impressive work of Finnish photographer Lesa Lehtimäki a.k.a. Avanaut on Flickr, which proves that big kids can have just as much fun playing around with the famous Danish export of colourful interlocking blocks.
Using stock standard LEGO Star Wars sets, he has created breathtakingly cinematic images that draw you into George Lucas’s sprawling sci-fi universe like few other Star Wars-inspired projects are capable of doing.
So lifelike are these LEGO images, and yet so playful and childlike at the same time, that it instantly drew me back to 1977 when a wide-eyed 11 year old followed his mother into the single screen wooden cinema in Ballina, NSW (Australia) to see an exciting brand new movie set in the imaginatively unbound surrounds of a “galaxy far, far away”.
I was enthralled then, and remained every bit as engrossed now, and it’s creatively inspired work like that of Lehtimäki’s that is responsible for the magic of Star Wars staying alive inside me.
The force remains strong with this one, and it is largely due to the willingness of fans like Lehtimäki to keep the spirit alive, even as many more cinematic offerings are in the pipeline, most notably the J. J. Abrams-helmed Star Wars: Episode VII, which is currently filming, and the series of standalone films and further episodes that will follow it.
You can see more of this talented photographer’s work at his Flickr page and also via Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks to First Showing for alerting me to this fabulous LEGO Star Wars photography.