Laurie Simmons

Early life

Career

Photography

• Early black and white : Simmons’ first mature works, shot in 1976, were black-and-white images taken in a dollhouse, un-peopled variations on each room in the house, particularly the bathroom, using sunlight and different angles to create a “dazzling, dreamlike stage set.” She then added a housewife doll into a kitchen set and "photographed the figure over and over in various positions — standing and sitting at the table, at the counter, in a corner, standing on her head with the kitchen in disarray. The mood is dramatically different than in the bathroom views."
• Black Series: For the Black Series, Simmons constructed spare rooms with dollhouse furniture and replicas of iconic, easily recognizable artworks. Simmons considered the photographs of these interior spaces her strongest work at the time.
• Early Color Interiors : In 1978, Simmons began shooting the figures in the dollhouse in color, to create the "Early Color Interiors" series. At that time, color photography was "more commonly associated with the artifice of commercial photography while black-and-white was perceived to be more truthful. By using the techniques and processes identified with advertising, fashion, and film, Simmons linked her work to a realm of suspended belief--the realm of fantasy and fiction that sustained many of her memories and longings."
• Cowboys: After much interest in her Early Color Interiors, Simmons began searching for new subject matter and decided to photograph a set of cowboy figures that belonged to Carroll Dunham. The cowboys were on horseback in an unrestrained outdoor environment, shot in a style reminiscent of television Westerns.
• Water Ballet : In 1979, Simmons began photographing dolls in a fish tank and eventually floating underwater in a full-sized pool. During this process, she turned her underwater camera to real people swimming. The result was "Water Ballet," a series that developed as Simmons choreographed underwater movements for her friends and photographed their interpretations.
• Color Coordinated Interiors : In the early 1980s, she created the series "Color-Coordinated Interiors", which used Japanese dolls called Teenettes, monochrome toys of women who Simmons photographed in front of rear projection images of interior decorated rooms. The dolls matched the color theme of the rooms.
• Tourism : The series that followed was "Tourism," in 1984, which also used the "Teenette" dolls, but showed them in groups visiting famous places around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal. This series investigated the mediation of these places through photography and media instead of real experience. "She used the same strategy to shoot the "Tourism" series as she used for the "Color-Coordinated Interiors," populating unrealistically pristine postcard views with her dolls via rear projection. The figures are color-cued to the background scene, which was often unintentionally monochromatic due owing to the poor quality of the slide." The slides were collected by Simmons from tourist shops and museum collections.
• Talking Objects : In 1987, Simmons visited the Vent Haven Museum in Kentucky and over a period of a few years photographed various dummies and props there, resulting in the "Talking Objects" series.
• Walking and Lying Objects : Simmons began using objects on legs in her series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late 1980s. The first work in this series is a work from 1987 titled "Walking Camera I," of Simmons's friend and former roommate, the late artist Jimmy De Sana, wearing an old-fashioned box camera costume. The photographs that follow use miniatures and small doll legs. "As she animates the objects, Simmons plays out various roles," wrote curator Jan Howard in an essay accompanying Simmons' retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art. "Her transformed women parade across a simulated stage as if in a fashion show or a musical, wearing the accoutrements with which they are identified."
• Clothes Make the Man: This series of male dummy sculptures were made in collaboration with figure maker Alan Semok. The seven dummies were identical, differentiated only by their clothes and subtitles. Simmons stated that the series "...was just about these minute differences in the way we look or the way we act that make us feel like we’re so profoundly different."
• Café of the Inner Mind: Simmons later took a more critical look at the dummies, photographing them in environments and using collage to interject their thoughts or visualizations. Much like the ventriloquists she had seen as a child, Simmons gave the dummies a dialogue based on her own projections. According to Simmons, "the dummy is such a metaphor for lying and telling the truth. The way the ventriloquist is able to say whatever he or she wants to say, through this other character. You don’t have to take responsibility for anything that you’re saying because the dummy said it or the dummy did it. It made me think about a lot of things, from news-casting to public speakers to politicians to friends."
• Kaleidoscope House : In 2001, Simmons collaborated with architect Peter Wheelwright to design an interactive modernist dollhouse called the "Kaleidoscope House." The house was decorated with miniature artwork and furniture by contemporary artists and designers. In the artistic statement for the project, Laurie Simmons and Peter Wheelwright wrote: "The Kaleidoscope House came out of our shared interests in domesticity and in particular the changing practices of home and family. Our individual work in photography and architecture has focused on these issues, and the promptings of our respective children have often figured in our thinking. Clearly, there is a need for a new dollhouse in the family playroom. Our hope is that The Kaleidoscope House with its sliding transparencies and changing aspects will give a colorful view into playful new possibilities." The Kaleidoscope House has become somewhat of a cult collector's item, and the house and accessories can still be found on e-commerce websites.
• The Instant Decorator : Also in 2001, Simmons began her "Instant Decorator" series, which was based on a 1976 interior decorating book of the same name, that provided templates of household rooms for the client to fill with swatches of fabric and paint samples. The series features works that are collage-like and opulently filled with accessories and characters in dramatic mises en scène.
• The Love Doll : In 2009, Simmons began a new series called "The Love Doll," featuring a lifesize doll from Japan. This series documents the ongoing days in the doll's life.
• Kigurumi, Dollers, and How We See: After exploring dolls on a life size scale, Simmons discovered a type of Japanese costume play called kigurumi in which participants become doll-like characters by dressing in masks and bodysuits. Simmons presents this transformative social experience and relates it to our relationship with social media.

  Film

Fashion

Feminism

In popular culture

Personal life

Exhibitions

• 1979: "Early Color Interiors" – Artists Space
• 1979: P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
• 1980: Metro Pictures Gallery
• 2015: Jewish Museum, "How We See," March 13-August 16

• 2000: Open Ends: Minimalism and After – Museum of Modern Art
• 2009: ‘The Pictures Generation, 1974 – 1984’ – Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 2010: ‘Off The Wall: Part 1 – 30 Performative Actions’ – Whitney Museum of American Art
• 2011: ‘Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography’ – Museum of Modern Art

• 1990: San Jose Museum of Art
• 1997: The Baltimore Museum of Art
• 2012: Gothenburg Museum of Art
• 2014: The Neues Museum in Nuremberg

• Corcoran Gallery of Art
• Hara Museum
• Jewish Museum
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Museum of Contemporary Art
• Museum of Modern Art
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
• Solomon R Guggenheim Museum of Art
• Stedelijk Museum
• Walker Art Center
• Whitney Museum of American Art

  Honors

• 1984: National Endowment for the Arts Grant
• 1997: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2005: The American Academy in Rome, Roy Lichtenstein Residency in Visual Arts
• 2006: Temple University, Distinguished Alumni Award
• 2013: Brooklyn Museum, Women in the Arts

  Filmography

• 2006: The Music of Regret – Producer, Writer, Director
• 2010: Tiny Furniture – as Siri
• 2016: My Art – Director, Writer

  Works and publications

• Catalog of an exhibition held at the San Jose Museum of Art, California, October 21-December 30, 1990.
• Published in conjunction with the exhibition held May 28-August 10, 1997 at the Baltimore Museum of Art
• Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, May 4-June 29, 2002
• Catalog of an exhibition held at Skarstedt Fine Art, New York and Sperone Westwater, New York
• Published in conjunction with the exhibition "The Love Doll: Days 1-30," in New York, at Salon 94, Feb. 15-Mar. 26, 2011 and in London, at Wilkinson Gallery, June 9-July 10, 2011; "The Love Doll : Days 31-36," in Aspen, Colorado, at Baldwin Gallery, Mar. 16-Apr. 15, 2012; and "The Love Doll," in Tokyo, at Tomio Koyama Gallery, in 2013