{"data":{"id":"3478","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3478,"topgoose_id":642,"tms_id":3478,"display_name":"Laurie Simmons","sort_name":"Simmons Laurie","display_date":"1949–","begin_date":"1949","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePhotographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons emerged as one of the artists of the Pictures Generation alongside \u003ca href=\"/artists/3477\"\u003eSarah Charlesworth\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/artists/2635\"\u003eBarbara Kruger\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/artists/4043\"\u003eLouise Lawler\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/artists/2909\"\u003eCindy Sherman\u003c/a\u003e. Named after the landmark exhibition in 1979, these artists challenged, and continue to challenge, the function of images and photography in society by questioning the role that images play, rather than their ability to function as documents. She has said: “I wanted to make pictures that were psychological, political, subversive. Images from my subconscious that could inform.” Simmons’s first series set female figurines inside of dollhouses, depicting domestic spaces and using them to critique representations of women by the media. She continued this work with inanimate subjects, including toy cowboys and ventriloquist dummies.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the late 1980s Simmons began\nworking on her\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Walking Objects\u003c/em\u003e series. A life-sized costumed camera in the 1978 movie \u003cem\u003eThe Wiz\u003c/em\u003e triggered a childhood memory of a 1950s cigarette advertisement featuring dancing Chesterfield cigarette boxes. Borrowing the original movie costume, Simmons convinced her friend and mentor, fellow photographer Jimmy De Sana, to don the costume and pose for a series of photographs printed at life-size. De Sana had been diagnosed with AIDS two years earlier, and he struggled under the weight of the costume. After making \u003cem\u003eWalking Camera,\u003c/em\u003e Simmons had her sister pose as an oversized walking purse. The series continued, including myriad disparate objects such as guns, houses, and cakes, but all subsequent images were made with doll and mannequin legs. While the spotlit, surreal, and often sardonic photographs in the series would become iconic for challenging the representation of women as “objects” in art history, \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8789\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWalking Camera II (Jimmy\nthe Camera)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e stands apart as a portrait of Simmons’s now departed friend.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500077698","wikidata_id":"Q3219659","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:45:57.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-10T07:00:56.980-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3478/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3478/exhibitions"}}}}