{"data":{"id":"8789","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":8789,"topgoose_id":3526,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":8789,"title":"Walking Camera II (Jimmy the Camera)","display_artist_text":"Laurie Simmons","display_date":"1987","accession_number":"94.107","dimensions":"Overall: 82 13/16 × 47 1/2 in. (210.3 × 120.7 cm)\r\nFrame: 88 13/16 × 53 9/16 in. (225.6 × 136.1 cm)","medium":"Gelatin silver print","department":"collection","classification":"Photographs","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":"Ed. 5","publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eLaurie Simmons, \u003cem\u003eWalking Camera II (Jimmy the Camera)\u003c/em\u003e, 1987. Gelatin silver print, overall: 82 13/16 × 47 1/2 in. (210.3 × 120.7 cm)\r\nFrame: 88 13/16 × 53 9/16 in. (225.6 × 136.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee 94.107. © 1987 Laurie Simmons\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWalking Camera II (Jimmy the Camera) \u003c/i\u003ebelongs to a series of images in which Laurie Simmons anthropomorphizes ordinary objects—including a purse, an hourglass, and a gun—by appending them to human legs. She stages and photographs her hybrids in black-and-white tableaux that explore the ambiguities of the animate and inanimate through distortions of context and scale. To make this work, Simmons borrowed an oversize prop from\u0026nbsp;the 1978 movie\u003ci\u003eThe Wiz\u003c/i\u003e and had her friend and mentor\u0026nbsp;Jimmy De Sana model in dancing tights and ballet shoes. Characteristically humorous, the amalgam was prompted by the artist’s childhood memory of a television show that featured dancing cigarette boxes and matchboxes. “It always stayed with me,” she recalled, “as a kind of image of something that was so physical, without a brain, without a heart, without a mind—but maybe something just about joyousness and gleefulness and fun.” Simmons’s subject is the chimerical nature of mass media imagery, and the glare of bright studio lighting in \u003ci\u003eWalking Camera II\u003c/i\u003e reflects a precious concoction of Hollywood-like artifice. Yet the camera’s congenial pose helps create the delightful balance of magic and fancy that marked the artist’s youthful recollection. Such images, Simmons suggests, may be an illusion, but they are also the stuff that dreams are made of.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Person stands wearing a large mechanical camera-like contraption covering their head and torso.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:46:06.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T11:59:39.051-05:00","images":[{"id":99877,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/8789/94_107_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"3478","type":"artist"}]}}}}